The second part of our follow up to the Mexico City Principles Editorial delves deeper into the multi-level marketing type of technique that a pharmaceutical company is employing to get its member doctors overprescribing certain medicines and products.

Here is the first part:
https://www.advocatesomi.com/2022/editorial-mexico-city-principles

We discussed the supposed implementation of the ethical guidelines for medical practitioners but it seems that The Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Association of the Philippines (PHAP) is ignoring these as the quota system is still being executed by greedy corporations that put the lives of Filipino patients at risk.

One reward system is the lure of a dividend type for profits wherein the pharma company promises to channel back funds to doctors who will aggressively prescribe medicines to patients.

The computation of rewards will allow these doctors to feel that they can carelessly more prescriptions and once the profit comes in, the doctor is provided a list of products that they can recommend to patients which would have a quota of about 7 a day.

If not through monetization, these doctors are promised luxury vehicles such as Lexus or BMWs. Rolex would also do the trick for the doctors to issue unnecessary prescriptions.

Because PHAP seems to turn a blind eye on this unethical practice, the Bureau of Internal Revenue should ask large drugchains like Mercury, Watsons, Rose, Southstar, and others the volume of medicines that are prescribed per month and how much it is channeled back to bank accounts of doctors through pharmaceutical companies.

Not only does the Mexico City Principle require doctors to avoid money for prescriptions but they should also specifically declare items or goods that they receive while they are prescribing products to their patients.

The need for an investigation within the industry is now. The medical community must act, otherwise, elected officials should get involved in this MLM style of selling as lives are put into peril.