The Pharma industry gets off to a slow start this week

The FT reports that the WHO may remove Sandoz' authorization to sell some of it's antibiotics after discovering manufacturing problems at the plant.

The Economic Times notes that Indian officals may complain to the FDA regarding the ongoing issues with drugs from Ranbaxy being banned, again over manufacturing irregularities. Interestingly, Ranbaxy have hire Rudy Guiliani to advise them on the issue.

Still on the generics front, sanofi-aventis has improved its bid for Zentiva NV to clinch the support of the Czech generic-drug company's board in a deal valued at 1.8 billion euros ($2.6 billion), according to Bloomberg.

Image via WikipediaBloomberg also declared that Taiwan banned all dairy products from China as inspectors found more cases of melamine contamination, a day after Hong Kong's two biggest supermarket chains pulled milk powder from their shelves. The scandal over melamine-tainted milk in China is linked to four infant deaths and hospitalization of 12,892 babies. Hong Kong's two largest supermarket chains, Wellcome and ParkNShop, withdrew Nestle SA's milk products after traces of the chemical were found.

Nestle yesterday said the amount was minute and wasn't considered harmful. However, the head of China's quality watchdog is reported to have resigned over the tainted baby milk scandal that has killed four children and nearly 53,000 others have now declared to be poorly.

Meanwhile, just as people thought the round of job losses and cuts in the industry had stabilised, Schering Plough announced 1,000 job losses on Friday in a bid to reduce costs, according to CNBC. Much of the downsizing will be felt in the field as they let go up to 20% of their US sales force.

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Nestle, Schering-Plough

Market trends - cheaper drug prices in US

Walmart announced yesterday that it was lowering the cost of a number of a broad range generics to $4 or $5 for a months supply and $10 for some on 90 days supply. These include generic anti-hypertensives, anti-cholesterol agents as well as may others, including even cancer drugs such as tamoxifen.

No doubt Target and K-Mart are forced to follow suit in order to compete.

The days of US citizens having to surreptitiously order and pay for prescriptions through Canadian internet pharmacies may be under threat.

Meanwhile, the several companies continue to kick the pharma industry while it's down, profiting off the patent losses of others and further extending their grip on the generic marketplace.

As healthcare costs continue to rise in the United States and big pharma companies watch their pipelines dry up, generic companies such as Teva Pharmaceuticals are doing well with a number of products that have recently gone off patent, such as the multiple sclerosis drug, copaxone. Aventis held the original approval, but since it went off patent, Teva manufactured Copaxone (glatiramar acetate), which passed over $500M in quarterly sales.