My investigation, “India’s ‘health camps’: the drug rep will see you now”, reveals for the first time how pharmaceutical companies are boosting drug sales in India through unchecked screening programs billed as corporate social responsibility. At free “health camps” across the country, sales reps and technicians from international and local firms have tested millions of poor people for chronic diseases, with doctors prescribing their products in return. Experts say the programs are likely to label many healthy people as sick, fueling over-treatment, and they appear to have helped manufacturers push expensive drugs over cheaper brands. They also violate national regulations, which prohibit anyone without a medical license from performing screening and diagnostic tests. Yet drugmakers such as U.S.-based Abbott Laboratories tout the health camps as examples of good corporate citizenship. Last year, when India made corporate social responsibility mandatory, Abbott decided that screening and health camps would be among its core CSR efforts. For this article, which was made possible by a research award from The Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute, I visited a number of health camps in India and interviewed three dozen reps, technicians and doctors involved in the events. Many of them spoke on the record, sharing disturbing information from the trenches of pharmaceutical marketing. The story was widely covered by the Indian media, including Times of India, The Economic Times and NDTV.
