Drug giant admits $2m payments

One of the world's biggest drug companies has revealed it gave more than $2 million last year to Australian healthcare professionals and organisations for sponsorships, grants, speaking engagements and consulting services.

The Australian arm of British giant GlaxoSmithKline said yesterday it was the first pharmaceutical company in Australia to reveal the aggregate donations and did so in the interests of transparency.

But the company's medical director, Camilla Chong, declined to reveal how much of that money went to individual health departments.

Dr Chong said of the $2,047,728 GSK gave out in 2010, $371,659 was individual grants to healthcare professionals to attend domestic and overseas conferences.

Of that, the split between public and private sector professionals was fifty-fifty, she said.

Almost $775,000 was for consultancy fees, speaker presentations, work on clinical development advisory boards and medical copy-writing, while more than $900,000 was sponsorship, donations and grants to health-related organisations.

Dr Chong said the payments were not inducements to prescribe GSK's products but part of building close relationships with medicos. "There's no point in us developing clinical studies based on what we know, we need to make sure they absolutely make clinical sense, have practical value at the patient end and that's why these close working relationships are absolutely important," she said.

"It's about attaining what's best for the development of the medicine for the patient, ultimately."

The disclosure comes two weeks after _The West Australian _revealed more than $1.4 million worth of gifts from pharmaceutical and technology companies were accepted by WA Health Department employees between December 2009 and April, including more than 350 trips to cities including Vienna and Brussels. Departmental "sponsored travel" is under review by Auditor-General Colin Murphy.