Promotion is any activity organised and financed by a pharmaceutical company to facilitate prescription, supply, use, recommendation, or consumption of pharmaceutical products (medicines, medical devices (MDs), and preventive care products (PCPs).
In turn, advertising, as a tool for promoting pharmaceutical products, is information distributed or placed in any form, by any means, for an indefinite audience, containing specific details on medicines and MDs, facilitating their promotion and distribution.
What are the basic requirements for advertising pharmaceutical products (medicines and MDs)?Properly advertising must be accurate, recognisable, exclude comparisons with other medicines and MDs, should not mislead consumers, including in relation to characteristics, composition, consumer properties, cost, intended results of use, research and test results, and should contain complete and reliable information about the drug or medical device.
Meanwhile, inappropriate advertising is related to unfair, misleading, unethical, deliberately false, and hidden advertising, which intentionally violates the specific requirements for its content, time, place, manner of distribution and placement established by the legislation of Kazakhstan.
To avoid certain legal and reputational risks, the subjects of pharmaceutical industry should attach great importance to the restrictions imposed by Kazakhstani legislation, which prohibits:- advertising of medicines and MDs, PCPs not registered in Kazakhstan;
- advertising of prescription medicines (PMs) in the media;
- distribution of PM samples for advertising purposes;
- use of children, their images and voices in advertising of medicines and MDs, except for medicines and MDs for children;
- distribution and placement of advertisements for medicines and MDs in public transport, organizations not related to their prescription, use or dispensing, except for advertising medicines at medical or pharmaceutical conferences, congresses, symposiums and other scientific meetings;
- placement of advertising information on industrial products, prescription forms;
- placement of outdoor (visual) advertising of medicines and MDs;
- the use of health professionals authorised to prescribe medicines and MDs as distributors of advertisements, unless they provide accurate information about medicines and MDs for scientific or educational purposes or to inform patients;
- advertising of services in the absence of a license to perform the relevant type of activity;
- advertisement for services provided by persons who are not certified healthcare professionals, including foreign specialists;
- to specify in advertisements for the population treatment of the following diseases: sexually transmitted diseases, cancer, mental and behavioral disorders (diseases), dangerous infectious diseases, HIV infection, tuberculosis, diabetes mellitus;
- to make reference in advertisements on recommendations of scientists, healthcare professionals as well as public officials who may encourage the use and/or prescribing of medicines and MDs;
- advertise services, medicines and MDs as unique, safest and most effective;
- claim that the safety and efficacy of a medicine is due to its natural origin;
- suggest that the effectiveness of the service or treatment with the advertised medicinal product is guaranteed and no side effects are experienced during product use;
- advertisements do not directly pertain to the advertised service, medicines or MDs;
- advertisement of offers for transactions involving human organs (part of an organ) and (or) tissues (part of a tissue)