(Yicai) Aug. 8 -- The China business of Novartis, a Swiss global healthcare giant, confirmed that it did receive a letter from a hospital advising it to let go two sales representatives amid China’s anti-graft campaign in the sector.

One of them resigned in 2018 and the other was never hired, Novartis China told Yicai today, adding that it is still looking into the matter raised in the letter. Novartis has always adhered to high ethical standards, it said.

Late last month China’s top anti-corruption watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, announced a year-long campaign to tackle widespread corruption in the healthcare sector. Investigations into more than 150 hospital directors have been started so far.

Shanghai Changzheng Hospital was rumored to have sent letters to Shanghai Novartis Trading and Beijing Novartis Pharma, affiliates of Novartis’ China business, asking them to dismiss or move four reps identified by the hospital’s probe into rule-breaking and give feedback on how it should deal with the matter. It is rare for hospitals to make such requests of pharmaceutical firms.

Novartis China said it has only received one letter from the hospital so far, which mentioned only two individuals.

According to the regulations, medical representatives are not allowed to offer donations and sponsorship to individuals or departments in healthcare providers, are not allowed to mislead doctors to use medicines, are forbidden to exaggerate or mislead on drug efficacy or hide known adverse side effects, or do anything to affect the rational clinical use of medicines.

Headquartered in Basel, Novartis is one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Its products are used in almost 140 countries and regions and it had sales last year of USD50.5 billion. Novartis has 8,000 employees in China. 

Editor: Peter Thomas