The Croatian Institute for Health Insurance (HZZO) issued a statement on Wednesday welcoming efforts to clear up the Pfizer scandal, saying it would cooperate with investigators dealing with the case.
The statement followed media reports saying that the US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer agreed to pay USD 60 million to settle charges that it gave bribes to doctors in several countries, including Croatia, to prescribe the company's medicines.
The HZZO said that the scandal undermined the reputation of health workers and Croatia's health system as a whole. It said that the agreement on ethical advertising of medicines, which was signed two years ago, removed mechanisms that had been used by pharmaceutical companies to bribe doctors.
The HZZO said that the practice of medicines approval was now much more transparent and subject to tighter controls so that things that had happened in the past would not happen again.
