Some have been modified as ambulances or fitted with armor and ballistic floor mats to protect occupants if they go over a land mine. Some companies have just started to get a toehold in the business. Three years ago, for instance, Schein Pharmaceutical Inc., a generic-drug producer based in Florham Park, N.J., hired Allison Formal, a former official with International Services for Medical Services for Health, a relief group, to help sell drugs to humanitarian organizations. Ms. Formal said Schein, in some cases, had given drugs at cost to relief groups to build up relationships. But typically, the company charges from 12 to 30 percent above a drug's production cost, she added.
Drugs sold to commercial wholesale buyers typically cost at least twice as much.
Drug companies in the disaster market must sell products to charities at a steep discount because they are competing against United Nations agencies, which buy huge quantities directly from manufacturers and pass the savings along. Donated medical supplies, which are desperately needed in crises like Kosovo, can cause their own problems for aid groups. Normally, a pharmaceutical company must destroy expired drugs in a hazardous waste incinerator, an expensive form of disposal. A WHO guideline now calls for donated medical supplies to be no less than a year away from expiration. But Max Ziv, a pharmacist working at Genpharm Inc., a generic drug maker in Toronto, said in a telephone interview that he had been giving charities drugs with a shelf life of six months.