Dr. Peter Rost is a veteran of the pharmaceutical industry, a physician and senior marketing executive with 20 years experience, and currently a Vice President at Pfizer. Speaking not on behalf of Pfizer but as an ordinary citizen, he supports the re-importation of drugs from Canada to the U.S. Dr. Rost will be one of two speakers -- along with Eshetu Wondemagegnehu, Technical Officer & Focal Person for Counterfeit Drugs Quality Assurance & Safety Medicines Essential Drugs and Medicines Policy, World Health Organization.
Speaking as a private citizen to relate some of his personal experiences -- and who will not in any way represent Pfizer -- Rost highlighted some of the issues he will be discussing in the December 10th web conference in a preliminary interview with Xtalks:
• The high cost of drugs in the U.S. is putting too many Americans at risk and many people are not getting the drugs they need. Re-importation can help these people as it would bring down drug prices.
• Given concerns about the safety of the existing drug supply within the United States, imported drugs may in fact be safer than drugs that have been distributed to Americans by major U.S. drug companies.
• European countries have sold pharmaceuticals among themselves safely for decades. According to Rost, the WHO has shown that Americans have shorter life expectancies, higher infant mortality rates, and higher child mortality rates than a host of other countries that have legalized re-importation, including most of Europe.
Mr. Eshetu Wondemagegnehu is a pharmacist by profession and works as the Technical Officer and Focal Person for Combating Counterfeit Drugs in the Division of Quality Assurance & Safety: Medicines (QSM), World Health Organization (WHO), Geneva. He joined WHO in 1994 and his main area of work is to provide technical support to WHO Member States to strengthen national medicine regulation and quality assurance capacity and to combat counterfeiting of medicines. His presentation will cover the following:
• What are counterfeit medicines ?
• What are the different types of counterfeit medicines detected so far ?
• Why do counterfeiters target medicines ?
• What are the other factors that encourage counterfeiting of medicines ?
• What are the different types of anti-counterfeiting strategies that could be used to combat counterfeiting of medicines ?
Registration for the event is currently open and is free, but space is limited. For more information and to register, visit
www.xtalks.com/dec_who.ashx or call (416) 977-6555 x233. This web conference will be of particular interest to managers and executives at pharmaceutical companies involved in compliance, regulatory affairs, supply chain, security, quality assurance, product development, and commercialization. And it will also be of interest to those involved in the regulating of pharmaceuticals.
For more information on this conference or on Xtalks in general: visit
www.xtalks.com or contact JP Fozo, VP, Business Development at: 416-977-6555 x291. Xtalks is part of the Honeycomb Worldwide Inc. Group of Companies
www.honeycombworldwide.com.
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