Annex C
MONEY RECEIVED FROM PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANIES
IN 2003
We received donations of £100,000 from
Serono Pharmaceuticals Ltd and £100,000 from Biogen Ltd to
help fund the MS fast-track nurse scheme. This scheme provides
pump-priming for MS nurse posts, and the Society itself has contributed
£100,000 to the fund. A further company, Teva Pharmaceuticals,
is involved in the scheme, but its £100,000 contribution
was not received until 2003. These three companies are manufacturers
of disease-modifying therapies for MS. (The fourth manufacturer,
Schering, has opted not to be involved in the scheme.) Nurses
funded through the scheme are employed by the NHS, work with all
people with MS—not just those receiving disease-modifying
therapies—and do not promote any particular product. In
this arrangement the Society essentially acts as an independent
intermediary with most of the money flowing direct to the NHS,
apart from a sum retained to provide specialist education for
the nurses.
We received a donation of £101,000 from
GlaxoSmithKline to part fund a £140,000 three-year project
at Oxford University (the balance of the project costs are met
by the Society). Loss of nerve fibres in the central nervous system
in MS is irreversible and determine impairment. The project will
investigate the extent of nerve fibre loss in people with MS and
whether there are compensatory mechanisms for fibre loss that
may be increased by drug treatments.
Small donations from pharmaceutical companies
totalling £502 were also received.
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