Bird flu This is the second in a series of three pieces on corporate readiness to fight avian flu. The FT finds the drugs industry does not have insider knowledge
For companies focused on the treatment of other peoples’ illnesses, the world’s big pharmaceutical groups have been reflecting for several months on how best to protect their own staff and businesses in the event of a flu pandemic.
Eric Teasdale, chief medical officer at AstraZeneca, the Anglo Swedish group, says discussions to exchange ideas with his counterparts in other drug companies are “at a healthy level”, and that his company’s top executive team is briefed regularly. “We obviously want to look after our staff as individuals, to ensure they are fit and well; but also to think about the impact on how we run the business,” he says.
But being in the drug industry does not mean having special “insider” knowledge on a future pandemic. “We just have to go along with the experts,” he says, citing country-by-country health advice provided by the consultancy International SOS, and the recommendations of the World Health Organisation.
Part 1: Banks and insurers prepare for avian flu outbreak
Some drug companies have the advantage of making products that would be directly relevant. “I keep a box of Relenza in my fridge,” says Jean-Pierre Garnier, head of UK-based GlaxoSmithKline, referring to the antiviral drug his company manufactures and which may serve as both prophylactic and treatment.
GSK is also stepping up its work on flu vaccines, which it already offers to all employees as a protection from the seasonal virus. And Swiss-based Roche says it has allocated sufficient quantities of its own antiviral flu drug Tamiflu for all its 65,000-strong staff and their families.
Roche says it has helped provide Tamiflu to rivals manufacturing flu vaccines in order to maximise the response to a pandemic by the entire pharmaceutical sector.
“It’s crucial to ensure Roche can continue producing,” says Martina Rupp, a company spokeswoman. “Many of our medicines are life-saving drugs and we need to ensure patients can get their medicines during a pandemic.”
One challenge is how to distribute Tamiflu to its staff in different countries with widely varied rules on prescriptions. “There are different regulations even between Basel county and Basel city,” Ms Rupp says.
Mr Teasdale says while AstraZeneca also has the continued production of life-saving medicines as a top strategic priority during a pandemic, it has been swept up in the global shortages of Relenza and Tamiflu and thus far has only been able to obtain small quantities of the drugs, raising ethical questions about how best to allocate supplies. “It’s not easy to do,” he says.
Other options under consideration include scaling up production of essential medicines to create a stockpile, and, as far as possible, switching to alternative plants less affected by staff falling ill.
Aside from shifts in manufacturing and travel restrictions for those in marketing and similar work during a pandemic, the drug companies – like those in other sectors – are reflecting on how to increase the scope for staff to work from home while people are ill or in quarantine.
That may work in back office functions, and to some extent for research and development staff. But Mr Teasdale says the activity most likely to suffer during the minimum two to three months of a pandemic will also be one of the most expensive of drug company activities: clinical trials.
Specially targeted at individuals with particular diseases and genetic make-ups, in clearly defined markets and accompanied by indispensable medical support staff, trials will be impossible to switch to other venues. If individuals drop out or fall ill, months could be lost or trials forced to re-start, at the cost of tens of millions of pounds.
For now, such events are a long way off. Like most of his counterparts, Mr Teasdale has so far judged it unnecessary to provide regular advice to staff on the company’s internal website. He advises staff in high-risk areas to employ heightened standards of personal hygiene, avoid contact with diseased animals, and not eat uncooked or undercooked poultry.
He and his colleagues hope no further advice is needed. Drug companies have as much to lose as they have to gain from a pandemic.
