Pharmaceutical companies are very generous when it comes to “rewarding” health professionals. Regards Citizens, an association that campaigns for the dissemination and sharing of political information, lifts the veil on the links of interest maintained by pharmaceutical companies with health practitioners. It works towards transparency by publishing data on gifts or contracts offered by laboratories to the various professions in the sector (doctors, dentists, pharmacists, students, nurses, etc.) between January 2012 and June 2014.
Several graphics revealed by this “open data” make it possible to assess the extent of these gifts paid to practitioners. Main teaching, laboratories spend without counting on meals (largest budget of laboratories in the list of “gifts”), hospitality, transport, accommodation, conferences and donations. The sum of these gifts represents an envelope of nearly 245 million euros over the period studied.
Between January 2012 and June 2014, 235,455 contracts were signed with practitioners.
The laboratories which have spent the most for healthcare professionals are, in order, Novartis pharma, Servier and GlaxoSmithKline.
In a diagram on the distribution of gifts according to the profession of the recipients, we discover that doctors are by far the most pampered by laboratories (doctors receive 80% of gifts). Far behind, they are followed by associations of health professionals and pharmacists (4% of gifts).
A publication in favor of transparency
Is this information a scoop? Yes and no. They are taken from information published by the orders of physicians, pharmacists, midwives, nurses and dentists, on the Transparency Santé government website, as well as 280 files made available by the Order of Physicians, specifies Citizen Regards on its site.
By publishing this data, the collective is relying on the Sunshine Act, adopted by Parliament in 2011. It provides that all gifts and contracts granted to health practitioners (doctors, dentists, nurses, midwives, pharmacists , students) by pharmaceutical companies are declared and published. But after consulting the CNIL, it was decided that the transparency on these data confidential and the amount of contracts would not be total, continues the collective. The consequence of “lobbying” for certain associations such as Regards citizens who intend to override this database.