As a part of the ongoing Faculty development seminar, Dr. Subish Palaian, Associate Professor of Pharmacy Practice at College of Pharmacy, delivered a module titled ‘Tackling unethical drug promotion and disease mongering: role of pharmacists’ on 13 December 2017. The module had a presentation and was followed by a small group learning session encompassing adult learning principles.
Dr. Subish provided the background on positive and negative aspects of drug promotion and introduced the concept of ‘Disease mongering’ to the participants who were the faculty members from the College of Pharmacy and College of Medicine.
Various scenarios on unethical drug promotion and disease mongering such as sexual disorders, psychiatric conditions, lipid lowering agents were discussed with available evidence and arguments. He also explained to the participants that only a thin line divides between medical and physiological conditions in few cases which could be exploited to promote pharmaceutical
products and increase market share.
He also emphasized various strategies that could be practiced by pharmacists to tackle unethical drug promotion and disease mongering, such as implementation of WHO ethical criteria for medicinal drug promotion, educating healthcare students on critical evaluation of biomedical literature, implementation of ‘Good Pharmacy Practice’ in practice settings, and research and
dissemination on drug promotion and related areas.
The module ended with a small group discussion and role play on case scenarios related to the topic.