German Drug Market Signals At Red?

German drug company managers are reportedly looking enviously at the USpharmaceutical market, which has annual growth of 13%, as they face virtual stagnation on the German drug market combined with a fall of some 6% in prescriptions.

The only growth-inducing factor is the high level of sales of a number of innovative and high-priced drugs, which they say benefit primarily the subsidiaries of US drug majors. Older drugs have posted either slower growth or an actual decline.

Move To Costlier, Innovative Drugs Horst Freisler, president of the research-based drug industry association, the VFA, says that this current trend is expected to continue and even strengthen. Mr Freisler, who is also president of Goedecke AG, a Warner-Lambert subsidiary, believes that a long-term structural change is taking place in the German market, with a higher level of prescribing of costlier, newer drugs while at the same time prices of patent-expired medicines have collapsed (by as much as 50% in some cases) to a level where they are competing at the level of generics.