Big Pharma causes counterfeiting.

The drug industry is “burying its head in the sand” when dealing with health in developing countries and denying poorer people access to life saving drugs, a report claims this week.

A critical report by the international agency Oxfam says that the drug industry is refusing to change the way it does business in poor countries, despite promising that it would, and is undermining its own future.

Oxfam's report looks at the world's top 12 drug companies, including their drug pricing policies, their record in developing drugs that are relevant to health care in poor countries, and their stance on protecting intellectual property rights.

The report says that the industry shows various shortcomings, including:

Failure to implement a systematic and transparent tiered pricing policy that is based on people's ability to pay

Continuing to neglect research and development concerning diseases that affect developing countries, and

Inflexibility in protecting intellectual property, which includes challenging poor countries in court to stop them using legal safeguards to protect public health.

Oxfam interviewed 12 companies in preparing the report: Abbott, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche, Sanofi-Aventis, and Wyeth.

In 2002 Oxfam, Save the Children, and Voluntary Service Overseas published Beyond Philanthropy, a report calling for the drug industry to contribute to solving the health crisis in developing countries. The new Oxfam report assesses what has changed since then and says that the industry has made only “halting progress” in some areas.

Oxfam's head of research, Sumi Dhanarajan, said, “The industry is operating in a shortsighted way, because it could gain enormous benefits from emerging markets, including lower research and development costs and cheaper manufacturing. The industry is burying its head in the sand.”