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Tuesday, September 13, 2005
The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI)
has said that it will fully co-operate with the study announced
by the Office of Fair Trading into the Pharmaceutical Price Regulation
Scheme (PPRS).
The PPRS, which has been in existence in one form or another
for nearly 50 years, has three main aims. They are to:
- Secure the
provision of safe and effective medicines for the NHS at
reasonable price.
- Promote a strong and profitable pharmaceutical
industry capable of such sustained research and development
expenditure as should lead to the future availability of new
and improved medicines.
- Encourage
the efficient and competitive development and supply of medicines to pharmaceutical
markets in this and other countries.
It achieves this by capping the profits that pharmaceutical companies
can make on their sales of branded, prescription medicines to the
NHS. It does not cover generic medicines.
“The PPRS is conducted in a very open and transparent way,
with annual reports to Parliament about its progress and full details
of how it operates made public,” said Dr Richard Barker,
Director General of the ABPI.
“We shall of course co-operate fully with the OFT as requested
by them during the course of their study.”
There is an ABPI publication, Understanding the PPRS,
which explains how the scheme works. It is available either from
the ABPI, Publications Department, 12 Whitehall, London, SW1A 2DY,
or through the ABPI
website. |
