More trouble is brewing for the Daiichi Sankyo-owned Ranbaxy Laboratories in the US, as a campaign has been unleashed against the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart, for selling drugs manufactured by Ranbaxy.
WakeupWalmart.com, an anti-Wal-Mart website which belongs to the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, came out with a report two days ago titled, 'Wal-Mart's vaunted $4 prescriptions supplied by disgraced Indian manufacturer.'
UFCW claims to have a membership of over 1.3 million workers in the US and Canada. WakeupWalmart.com mainly campaigns for the rights of Wal-Mart employees and consumer interests.
'Wal-Mart's use of a corporate bad actor to cut costs deserves significant scrutiny,' the report said.
Wal-Mart's $4 prescription programme, which covers up to 95 per cent of the prescriptions generated in a majority of therapeutic categories in the US, provides its customers over 350 prescription medicines for just $4 for a month's dose.
In May, Wal-Mart extended the '$4 Prescription Programme' with a package of 90 day prescriptions for $10.
Earlier, Wal-Mart had said that, through such programmes, the US consumer would benefit by over $1 billion. Most of the leading Indian generic drug makers, such as Dr Reddy's, Cipla, Sun Pharma, Glenmark and Wockhardt supply drugs to leading departmental stores in the US. Wal-Mart sells such drugs under its private label.
"We will not comment on such trivial campaigns," a Ranbaxy spokesperson said.
Industry observers said the report has not clarified whether the drugs supplied by Ranbaxy to Wal-Mart included the drugs banned by the FDA.
"Ranbaxy cannot sell any of the 30 drugs banned by the Food and Drug Administration in the US. Whatever drugs they sell in that market are legal and have safety and efficacy clearance from the regulator," Ranjit Kapadia, VP-institutional research, HDFC Securities, said.
Ranbaxy's supplies to the retail giant are estimated to be in the range of 5-10 per cent of its whole supplies to the US, which account for one-fourth of its drug exports, he said. Ranbaxy declined to reveal details of its drug supplies to Wal-Mart.
'Wal-Mart imports a variety of generic drugs from Ranbaxy, which are used to treat bacterial infections, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, allergies, cold sores and acne. Eight months before the FDA cited Ranbaxy for serious violations, Wal-Mart gave the drug supplier an award for being a top performing supplier,' the report said.
Ranbaxy has been repeatedly investigated by the FDA and the Department of Justice for 'inadequate' safeguards against contamination, falsification of records and submitting false information to the FDA, the report added.
It also published details of DoJ and FDA investigations against Ranbaxy, besides the list of drugs banned by the FDA. The report has been reproduced by numerous news sites and blogs in the US.
In September 2008, the FDA had banned about 30 drugs manufactured by Ranbaxy at its Paonta Sahib and Dewas plants in India and had decided not to approve any new drugs from these plants till the regulatory issues were resolved.
Ranbaxy had said recently the company was co-operating with the FDA and has charted an action plan to meet the regulatory standards of the US regulator.