Promise to clean up pollution from pharmaceutical factories

Thirteen pharmaceutical leaders promised on Tuesday to clean the pollution from factories of antibiotics and adopt measures to limit the abuse of medicines as part of a directive to combat the emergence of Superbugs resistant to drugs.
The industry''s announcement coincides with a high-level meeting on antimicrobiótica resistance, as part of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
Among the companies that have joined the scheme are leading producers of brand-name drugs and generic, including Pfizer, Merck, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Allergan, and Indian manufacturers Cipla and Wockhardt.
The group will work with independent experts to establish new industrial standards and review the supply chain to ensure that the amount of residue of antibiotics do not contaminate streams of water, which can lead to the emergence of superbugs.
Efforts to prevent the abusive use of antibiotics will involve a review of promotional activities and the implementation, until 2020, of concrete measures such as removing incentives for selling drugs in large volumes.