PESHAWAR, July 28: Pharmaceutical companies are bribing doctors in novel ways to increase the sale of their medicines. Multinational companies were purchasing cars for doctors on lease from banks to ensure that the latter prescribed their products to patients, said a doctor.

According to him, a multinational company had purchased a brand new car for a surgeon. "Medical representatives sit outside the clinic of a doctor or a surgeon to ensure that the latter prescribes the company's medicines to each and every patient," he said.

Another MNC is trying to strike a deal with a physician under which the company would purchase a very expensive car for the doctor. "The doctor wants the company to buy the car for him in cash, but the company's representative wants to acquire the car on lease in order to bind the doctor for prescribing their drugs on regular basis," said a source.

Another interesting episode involves an associate professor of medicine at a teaching hospital who has got an insurance policy for which an MNC is paying Rs1.2 million every year.

A doctor at a hospital in the city said that some of the MNCs were aggressively pursuing the doctors. "A dermatologist is prescribing food supplements to every patient unnecessarily," he alleged. The same doctor had received Rs500,000 from the company, he added.

A consultant said that an MNC's representative had contacted him to offer a new car to him, which he refused. "Under the deal I was required to prescribe their products to all the patients visiting my OPD at the hospital. I examine at least 80 patients in the OPD and cannot do injustice with my profession by prescribing drugs to the poor patients unnecessarily," said the doctor.