Patient organisations are groups that work to improve the quality of life for people with a particular disease or medical condition. They provide support services and information to patients, carers and their families and they put people in touch with other people facing similar experiences. Most people know someone who has turned to a patient organisation at some point in their life. Patient organisations also campaign for better standards of care and access to treatments for the patient they represent.
We think it is important to provide financial support to these organisations to help them provide these support services. We also provide funding to patient organisations when we partner with them on specific projects.
Patient organisations also want - and need - to know about new medicines that might benefit the patients they represent. If they ask us for this information we are happy to provide it within the regulatory constraints we face. From our perspective, working with patient organisations gives us a better understanding of patient needs and this can help us provide better disease management programmes.
Our work with patient organisations is very much a partnership to ensure the independence and credibility of both organisations. We never make payments in order to influence prescribing behaviour.
As a member of The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI), we are required to declare a list of patient organisations with which we have involvement and describe the nature of these partnerships. We have decided to go beyond this and have declared our full relationships with these organisations. In providing funding to patient groups, Pfizer’s guiding principle is to ensure that the organisation’s independence is not compromised and there is no dependency on funding we provide. That is why we’ve provided an approximate percentage of each organisation’s revenue that is represented by our funding. In some cases, where an organisation is either new or has a small income, the percentage of funding provided by Pfizer will be higher. Where this is the case, we encourage the organisation to seek and secure other sources of sustainable funding in line with the guidelines outlined in the ABPI Code of Practice.
Click here to see our involvement with patient organisations during our last financial year, which runs from December 2007 to November 2008.