Israel-Medical-Healthcare

[genisi]

Health ministry suspects 'journalists' at meetings are drug company spies

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1123823.html#at

By Dan Even

The Health Ministry has been looking into suspicions that two people posing as journalists at meetings of the committee selecting drugs included in the public health basket are unofficial representatives of pharmaceutical firms who are banned from the meetings.

Starting last year, an unidentified man started attending meetings of the committee and presenting himself as a journalist. His presence drew the suspicions of representatives of the Health Ministry, who are familiar with all the journalists covering health issues in Israel.

The individual had followed the deliberations of the committee and taken notes developments during the meeting.

In late September, efforts were made to clarify the man's identity with the newspaper where he allegedly worked, and he stopped coming to the meetings.

In early October, another unidentified person came to the meetings, presenting himself as a journalist, and he too stopped coming after checks into his identity started.

There are suspicions that the two were representatives of pharmaceutical firms sent to follow the developments at the meetings in order to gather commercial intelligence.

In recent years, pharmaceutical firms have complained that there is a lack of transparency at the "medicine basket" committee because they are not allowed to attend. Moreover, the firms argue that the members of the committee, because of the lack of transparency, fail to provide adequate justification for excluding certain medicines from the basket.

The Health Ministry decided three years ago to open the meetings to journalists and allow the publication of a synopsis of each meeting at the Health Ministry's Web site.

Real time intelligence on what is happening in the committee can serve pharmaceutical firms in lobbying members of the committee.

As a result of the incident with the unidentified "journalist," the Health Ministry restricted entrance to the committee's meetings to journalists covering health issues, and exceptions are only made by previous arrangements with the spokesman's office at the ministry.

"The deliberations of the committee on the health basket are made transparent via the health reporters," the Health Ministry said. "It is unfortunate that external elements are sparing no effort to attend the meetings and every effort will be made to prevent unauthorized persons from attending the deliberations of the health basket committee."