Programme a breach of ethics
I AM a medical doctor. As health professionals, doctors have an obligation to abide by the highest standards in our everyday practice. After all, we all solemnly took the Hippocratic Oath on the day we graduated from medical school, a pledge that is expected to last a lifetime.
For a number of years, two large pharmaceutical manufacturing companies in Malaysia, both of which are listed on Bursa Malaysia, have been offering a “customer loyalty programme” to general practitioners (GP).
In essence, a GP would be offered to enter into a written agreement with these companies, whereby they would be awarded an all-expense paid overseas holiday if they are able to achieve a certain amount of purchase of the company’s medical products within a oneyear period. Shockingly, if the purchase amount multiplies accordingly, the said GP is eligible to bring along his spouse and even his entire family for the sponsored trip.
It must be stressed here that these overseas trips are not associated in any form with medical conferences or seminars that offer continuous medical education (CME) but are instead vacations purely for enjoyment purposes.
Personally, I view this so-called customer loyalty programme as an open inducement offered to GPs to preferentially/exclusively purchase products from these companies regardless of price, quality of product or even necessity.
A doctor has a duty of care to his patients where he must ensure that the medicines he prescribes is, to his best knowledge, the most suitable in terms of efficacy, safety and affordability. Having to meet certain purchase volumes just so that the GP qualifies for a sponsored overseas trip compromises these values, which are meant to safeguard the interest of patients.
In fact, by colluding to this scheme, the GP is in clear breach of professional ethics and code of conduct. One must remember that patients are particularly vulnerable because the GP commands their trust and respect.
In 2014, a huge scandal broke out in China where a large British drug-maker was fined to the tune of millions of US dollars for offering bribes to doctors in the form of lavish overseas holidays and cash funnelled from travel agencies. Top executives of this drug company were charged and found guilty of offering bribes, for which they received suspended jail sentences. News of this large-scale bribery made international headlines and one would think that such a practice would have stopped here in Malaysia. Unfortunately, it has not – and has gotten even more rampant in recent times.
I urge my fellow colleagues to uphold their professional integrity at all times and not to partake in this shady inducement scheme offered by these drug manufacturers, no matter how tempting it may sound. DR JY Petaling Jaya