Medicines Australia Code of Conduct: breaches

The Medicines Australia Code of Conduct guides the promotion of prescription products by pharmaceutical companies.¹ Each year Medicines Australia publishes a report, from its Code of Conduct Committee, which details all the complaints that have been received about advertising and other promotional activities.

The latest report² reflects the first year of operation of the 16th edition of the Code. As usual, most complaints about promotional activity were made by rival pharmaceutical companies or the Medicines Australia Monitoring Committee. Only about half of the complaints resulted in a breach of the Code being found. Table 1 shows the complaints where at least one breach was identified and more details can be found in the full report.²