The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 277 No 7425 p536
4 November 2006

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Wholesaler rift widens as European meeting disrupted

Alliance Boots’s wholesale and commercial affairs director, Ornella Barra, is accused this week of disrupting a European Association of Pharmaceutical Full-line Wholesalers (GIRP) meeting, which took place in Brussels.

Alliance Boots said that Ms Barra had been denied the right to speak by not being allowed either to use an interpreter to translate from Italian into English, or to speak in French, one of GIRP’s official languages.

GIRP said that the meeting could not be started because of “the ongoing verbal attack from the Alliance UniChem representative in a non official language of the association”.

Boots Alliance said that the meeting had been called to look at a GIRP executive committee decision to write to the British Government expressing disapproval of Pfizer and UniChem’s distribution agreement.

The company said that Ms Barra questioned the GIRP president’s capacity to act as chairman of the meeting because of a “conflict of interest” over his involvement with the letter.