Unhealthy Competition
Pharmaceutical companies deny bribing doctors to promote sales of their products. The evidence proves otherwise.
April 3, 2001
In 1996 a young doctor named Boenjamin Setiawan set up a small business in Bandung, West Java, to produce medicines that ordinary Indonesians could afford. In time, the small business called Kalbe Farma grew by leaps and bounds into what it is today—Indonesia’s biggest pharmaceutical company. With a 12-percent share of the market it competes with the world’s largest drug multinationals, long established in this country. Last y...