"Bruce in Bangkok" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 13 Mar 2008 09:46:40 -0400, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:


"Bruce in Bangkok" wrote in message
. ..

snip

I don;t know either but up until last week the paper said that the
government was considering action, but as I wrote in another post
today the paper announced that the Government Pharmaceutical
Organization was constructing a factory to make several drugs under
the CL laws (or agreements).

So much for "News" papers.

If they're the ones that also told you Thailand doesn't have price
controls
on drugs, they're worth their weight in birdcage liners. d8-)


No, that was actually the Chulalongkorn University pharmacy department
people that told me that and I tend to believe them as from my own
experience prices vary between shops or in various provinces.

This is not to say that distributors don;t try to do some price fixing
though.

I do know, however, that there are some kind of control as some
medicines aren't sold in pharmacies. Fosamax 1 a week was one I
remember. The one a day tabs were sold in pharmacies but the one a
week weren't. you had to get them at a hospital.

Well, the word from the international pharma marketing sources is that
Thailand has price controls, but that they're basically too corrupt and
incompetent to enforce them very effectively. Only a few are enforced.

There are two agencies involved, and the Thai FDA appears to be the place
that politicians send their idiot nephews for high-paying jobs. Like most
smaller countries, Thailand just copies what's going on at the US FDA and
European FDAs, runs a pseudo research and "certification," and then
rubber-stamps what the big guys are doing. This keeps the revenue flowing
and avoids the problem of having to do anything that demands real effort.

We get cynical after a few years of working in the pharma business. But we
call it being realistic. d8-)

--
Ed Huntress