Pharma Veterans

Tender Spots of Pharma Industry III – Blog Post #388 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #388. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large . Pharma Veterans Blog  is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress , the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here . Reference Countries – DRAP considers reference countries from three angles. One, there is a list of countries from where prices of similar drugs are taken, and a basket price is determined which becomes the basis for price fixation in Pakistan. It was mentioned in the previous blog also. Two, all new applications for registration are checked against availability in the SRA (Stringent Regulatory Authority) countries. These include US, EU, UK, Japan and Australia. If a drug or combination or dosage form is not available in SRA countries, the DRAP rejects...

Tender Spots of Pharma Industry II – Blog Post #387 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #387. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large . Pharma Veterans Blog  is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress , the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here . Pricing Mechanism – Fixation of drug prices has been a cause of bad blood between the industry and DRAP/Government, besides politicization. Few years ago, many companies went to high court to seek relief. The cases kept on piling and the defendants (DRAP/Govt) kept on delaying proper response. The cases were closed finally after instructions to formulate a new Drug Pricing Policy while taking all stakeholders on board. That took another quite some time and there are still grey areas in interpretation and implementation. Government does not want to leave even a...

Tender Spots of Pharma Industry I – Blog Post #386 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #386. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large . Pharma Veterans Blog  is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress , the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here . This is the season of tenders. Tendering is a process through which government and private institutions purchase items of their requirement. There is plenty to talk about this process, but we shall not talk about these tenders. Tender is also soft touch, behavior, talk which is used when handling with care is desired; Tender Loving Care – TLC is in common use. We are not going to discuss that either. Tender in medical terms is any spot which hurts upon touching. When we get a sprain for example, we have a tender ankle which becomes more painful when touch...

Ruth Bader Ginsburg; Tribute & Relevance – Blog Post #385 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #385. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large . Pharma Veterans Blog  is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress , the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here . US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away on September 18, 2020 at the age of 87. She was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1999. In the twenty odd years till her passing away, she had five bouts of cancer and finally gave in to pancreatic cancer. During the last few years, her health status was watched by public closely and at every hospital admission, lot of people went into prayer for her recovery. No one wanted her to go yet. But fate finally prevailed. As per Judiciary Act of 1789 of US Constitution, Each Justice has a lifetime te...

Gender Bias V – Pakistan Landscape – Blog Post #384 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #384. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large . Pharma Veterans Blog  is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress , the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here . In this concluding part, we wrap up discussion on Gender Bias while looking at situation in Pakistan. Gender Bias runs in our social fabric, our chemistry and our biology. The major reason, in my view is our Hindu background. Muhammad Bin Qasim is considered to have brought Islam to this part of the world. Prior to that, the entire community in what is now India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka was Hindu and Buddhist. Buddhism flourished after Ashoka embraced it and made it official religion. Hindu system was based on severe caste and gender restriction...

Gender Bias IV – McKinsey’s Recommendations for repairing the ‘Broken Rung’ – Blog Post #383 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #383. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large . Pharma Veterans Blog  is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress , the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here . McKinsey & Company, in the ‘Women in the Workplace 2019’ have recommended five steps that companies can take to fix the broken rung – and ultimately their pipeline. The two points of emphasis here, before we look at recommendations, are as follows. One, since women do not get the opportunity to become first line manager, their future growth is directly compromised. It will always be well-nigh impossible to jump the rung and become a middle line manager without passing through the first stage. Two, denying fir...

Gender Bias III – McKinsey’s Research on ‘Women in the Workplace’ – Blog Post #382 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #382.. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large . Pharma Veterans Blog  is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress , the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here . McKinsey & Company is a world-renowned organization which advises and assists global corporations in several key functions. McKinsey’s carries out research on topics of corporate relevance and publishes reports based on data collected from world over. McKinsey’s took up the subject of Women in the Workplace in 2015 and has been following it up consistently. To my knowledge, this is the most authentic research on the subject done at this scale. Every year, McKinsey publishes an update of research. I am giving below exce...

Gender Bias in Workplace II – Blog Post #381 by Asrar Qureshi Dear Colleagues!  This is Pharma Veterans Blog Post #381. Pharma Veterans welcomes sharing of knowledge and wisdom by Veterans for the benefit of Community at large . Pharma Veterans Blog  is published by Asrar Qureshi on WordPress , the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here . Gender Bias and Gender Inequality is seen around the world and is seen even in places where it is hard to justify. For example, women actors are paid much less in Hollywood and Bollywood. The gap is huge. Apparently, there is no justification for this because both work equally hard to make a movie successful. Remember, it is not ‘pay as per work’. A guy may charge a huge sum for a small appearance while a gal will never get that privilege. More recently, movies like Wonder Woman have joined Billion Dollar Earners Club, but it has not eliminated the disparity between men and w...