Shanghai Health Planning Commission verifies the Sanofi bribe event

On August 11th, the Shanghai Municipal Health and Family Planning Commission has asked various medical institutions to verify the "Sanofi's research funding to hospitals" incident and strictly regulate the relevant work processes such as drug procurement.

Recently, media reported that Sanofi’s company has provided “research funding” to a number of hospitals and doctors in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, and this issue has received extensive attention from all walks of life. The incident was allegedly involving 24 hospitals and 158 doctors in Shanghai with a total funding of 6.25 million yuan.

The reporter interviewed Ruijin Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine and Zhongshan Hospital Affiliated to Fudan University. It was learned that the hospital attached great importance to it and began conducting self-examination after seeing relevant news reports, and cooperated with the health administrative department to carry out inspections. The full investigation involved Sanofi. The company's various scientific research topics, clinical trials and other conditions. Zhu Jianmin, director of the Xuhui District Central Hospital in Shanghai, said that the hospital is a clinical drug research base. The Sanofi company's clinical trials project was approved by the food and drug supervision and management department, and it was not exposed to the relevant drugs.

Among the materials provided by mediators to the media, they focused on the sales of Sanofi’s two drugs “Ambowe”, “Ambolon”, and doctors’ access to so-called research funding. Experts in the industry told reporters that these two drugs are antihypertensive drugs, mostly used in cardiology, neurology, gerontology, Chinese medicine and other patients. “The key to whether it is research funding or bribery in disguise is whether the funds are really used for scientific research or the cost of selling medicines,” said the expert.