Bitter Pills:Medicines & The Third World Poor | Page 180

the worldwide supply of drugs to mission hospitals was still critical. Inflation
fanned the flames created by world poverty and need. The questionnaire we
circulated threw up enormous demands, especially in the basic generic, life-saving
drugs such an antibiotics, anti-leprosy, anti-tubercular and anti-malarial drugs.
For example, a mission on the Ivory Coast spent £15,000 on drugs in 1973; for
the same amount of drugs in 1974 it spent £26,000. In 1975, the same drugs would
cost nearly £40,000. ECHO set itself the task of reducing the expenditure to the
1973 level."(69)
ECHO soon found itself handling large drug orders, particularly when aid agencies
like OXFAM needed emergency supplies for disaster relief work. Demand rose,
so that in 1977 a budget of £224,000 was specifically allocated for drug purchases
that year. By 1980 ECHO'S annual drugs turnover had leapt to £2 million. The
scale of ECHO'S operations is illustrated by the fact that it has held stocks of
up to a third of total world production of the vital anti-leprosy drug, dapsone,
ready to turn round orders within 7 to 14 days.
ECHO supplies a range of 120 basic generic drugs which it buys both from British
generics manufacturers and increasingly from Pharmamed, a non-profit-making
factory in Malta. Pharmamed was set up by the International Dispensary
Association (IDA), with funds from the Dutch Development Bank. In 1981 its
production was 600-700 million tablets a year, which were sold to ECHO, IDA,
Action Medeor and other non-profit-making drug suppliers in Europe. (70)
ECHO sells only good quality generics (to British Pharmacopeia standards) and
offers its customers considerable savings on the cost of equivalent brand name
products. According to Dr. Burton, ECHO'S Medical Director, "The price saving
is in the range of the generic drug being anything from one-quarter to one-tenth
of the price of the exact equivalent advertised product". He adds that "the
argument the multinationals used to give that their ethical products were superior
to the generic, has no real basis in scientific fact ..." (71)
A number of research-based manufacturers have shown their readiness to
collaborate with ECHO. Some are charging ECHO specially reduced prices for
a few of their patented products that are particularly relevant to Third World
needs, but normally prohibitively expensive. For example, ECHO has bought
rifampicin from Ciba-Geigy (under its brand name Rimactane) at a quartef7^he
commercial price in Britain. This obviously helps the mission hospitals. For
manufacturers, ECHO offers the advantages of regular, sizeable orders.
ECHO has recently produced its own Pharmaceutical Data Sheet Compendium.
This booklet gives a simple description of how to use each of the basic generic
drugs supplied. It is aimed at nurses and health workers who may not be aware
of the existence of simple generic equivalents to '&