Pfizer is not alone – other drugmakers across Europe are trying to evade the traditional wholesale route to pharmacies and are appointing one or more companies as logistic service providers in individual markets. The manufacturers are also seeking greater control over their products, better data on transactions at the point of sale and closer relationships with community pharmacists, whose influence on which medicines are dispensed is increasing at the same time as governments limit choices for prescribers.
The inherent cross-subsidy in full-line wholesaling between high-value originator products and low-cost drugs, especially generics, has also generated a rift between the manufacturers and wholesalers, with drugmakers considering full-line wholesaling as a blessing in disguise for their competitors. Parallel trade and the entry of counterfeit medicines in the legitimate supply chain has also become one of the most contentious issues in drug trade, said the report.
According to Bernard Amoury of Sanofi-Aventis, European markets are the most difficult to conduct business in the world, and the distribution changes sought by manufacturers were part of a defensive strategy for survival, rather than an attack on wholesaling.
According to Scrip World Pharmaceutical News, wholesalers across Europe are coming under intense pressure, as their margins are being squeezed by the governments and national health insurers. With no respite available from any quarter, they are looking towards redefining their role in the changing environment and are increasingly searching for newer business models to sustain their share in the market.
Mika Vidgren of the PGEU, the European pharmacists’ group, has extended support for the traditional model of distribution and said that ‘efficiency gains should not be achieved at the expense of access to medicines or quality’.