Friday, March 26, 2004

From CBC Manitoba:
Web pharmacists vow to fight for cross-border sales
Representatives of Canadian Internet pharmacies say despite powerful pressure, they won't abandon the lucrative U.S. market.

Online companies say pharmaceutical manufacturers are trying to stop them from selling their drugs to Americans at a cheaper price. The web pharmacies are also fighting the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which is telling Americans that Canadian drugs are not as safe as the ones they can buy at home.

From the Globe & Mail:
Internet pharmacy sales to U.S. more than double, study shows
Canada's Internet pharmacy industry more than doubled its sales to the United States last year, according to the first published study of annual growth in the cross-border trade.

Figures released yesterday by IMS Health show that the business of selling drugs to Americans over the Internet was worth at least $566-million for wholesalers in 2003, up from $251-million in 2002.

From the Montreal Gazette:
Prescriptions rise by 7.9%
Canadians bought a record number of prescription drugs in 2003, and Quebecers are most likely to walk out of their pharmacy with a brand-name drug, not a cheaper generic substitute.

IMS Health, and industry research group, said Canadian retail pharmacies filled 361 million prescriptions during the year - a jump of 7.9 per cent over 2002, the largest gain in the last decade.

From the Calgary Herald:
Hospital staff believe many mistakes hidden
More than two of every three health-care workers in the Calgary Health Region believe the bulk of errors committed inside hospitals -- primarily mis-reading labels and confusing sound-alike drugs -- go unreported.

A survey released Thursday by the CHR found 40 per cent of respondents said feelings of embarrassment keep them from disclosing mistakes.

From the Portsmouth (NH) Herald:
Benson, N.H. await Canadian drug report
An investigation by state officials is expected to show that reimporting medicine from Canada is safe, but the report won’t be released for another week, Gov. Craig Benson said Thursday.

"I think there’s a lot of questions in New Hampshire," Benson said. "Hopefully we’re going to have some answers for them based on some investigations that we’ve done on our own."

No comments: