PHILADELPHIA – After a year of paltry earnings growth and questions about drug safety, the pharmaceutical industry has seized an opportunity to brush up its image. The tsunami disaster is prompting companies to open their wallets and warehouses as never before.

The outpouring of cash and supplies by corporations – and pharmaceutical and health-care products companies in particular – is surpassing donations to victims in any previous natural disaster, or even the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, relief agencies say. In all, health-care companies have announced donations totaling at least $72 million so far.

Thursday night a FedEx airplane left Washington Dulles International Airport packed with $1.5 million worth of donated medicines and medical supplies. The shipment, destined for Jakarta, Indonesia, and sponsored by Project Hope, contained everything from antibiotics, antiviral drugs and skin-infection ointments donated by GlaxoSmithKline to bandages and surgical dressings from Johnson & Johnson.

By the end of this week, FedEx expects to have shipped 200 tons of medical supplies, first aid products and portable medical laboratories to Sri Lanka and Indonesia, spokesman Pam Roberson said. United Parcel Service said it is prepared to ship up to 1 million pounds of emergency relief supplies weekly via air, ocean and ground from Europe, Asia and the Americas. UPS put the value of those services at $2.5 million.

With gifts of items from scalpels, syringes and bandages to anti-diarrhea medicines, nutritional supplements, cough medicine, and rehydration treatments, humanitarian groups say the flow of medicines and cash is the greatest ever seen, said Ken Baker, director of corporate relations for AmeriCares. His group has sent a plane of medicines to Sri Lanka and soon will airlift medicines and supplies into India and Indonesia.

“Pharmaceutical companies are asking what we need. They are not telling us what they have available. It’s extraordinary,” said Martin Smith, spokesman for Map International of Brunswick, Ga., a nonprofit organization that plans to airlift 10 cargo containers of medicines and supplies to help tsunami victims.

Baker, of AmeriCares in Stamford, Conn., said GlaxoSmithKline has an ongoing program to supply several nonprofit relief agencies with a $7 million line of credit to choose products – such as antibiotics, anti-parasitics and anti-ulcer drugs – to keep in charities’ warehouses, available to ship immediately in any disaster. “It’s unprecedented for us to see that kind of line of corporate credit,” he said.

Glaxo has donated 2 million doses of antibiotics for tsunami relief, and 600,000 vials of hepatitis A and typhoid vaccines, as well as $3.8 million in cash for relief efforts. The drug maker said its antibiotics have already been airlifted to Sri Lanka, India and Indonesia by AmeriCares.

Merck & Co. Inc. has given $3 million in cash to relief agencies and will donate medicines as needed, said spokeswoman Anita Larsen.

Among the biggest corporate givers is Pfizer Inc., which is providing $10 million in cash and $25 million in medicines. “Local authorities are telling us they need painkillers, antibiotics and antifungals” for skin infections, said Paula Luff, Pfizer senior director of international philanthropy, in an interview.

The world’s largest pharmaceutical company, Pfizer has offices in all Asian countries affected by the tsunami disaster, except Sri Lanka, and is donating medicines from supplies already in Thailand, India, Malaysia and Indonesia. Pfizer employees in those countries are delivering medicines to hospitals and local governments directly. “The medicine labels are in their language,” she said. “If we exhaust local supplies, we have a supply point in Hong Kong.”

Project Hope president and CEO John Howe said doctors are seeing crush injuries, lung infection and now pneumonia and dysentery – especially in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, which was hard-hit by the tsunami.

“The immediate needs, particularly in Indonesia, are for antibiotics, syringes, intravenous lines, catheters, bandages, dressings and surgical tape to respond to the injuries and infections,” Howe said.

Fresh drinking water is one of the items most needed. Many sources, like wells, have been contaminated by seawater, debris and sewage. Procter & Gamble has given 9.8 million packets of powder to purify drinking water and sold another 6 million packets to relief groups at steeply discounted prices.

Wyeth has donated $1 million, and given antibiotics, vaccines, anti-inflammatory products, nutritionals and analgesics. Wyeth is also donating over-the-counter consumer products, such as Advil, Dimetapp and Robitussin.

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Israel-based Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., a generic drug maker with its U.S. headquarters in North Wales, has shipped 40 tons of medicines, including antibiotics, first aid creams, and painkillers to Thailand via relief organizations in Israel.

Relief agencies do not expect problems from outdated donated pharmaceuticals or oversupplies of medicines that plagued past humanitarian disasters in Kosovo and Bosnia. The World Health Organization issued guidelines in 1996 to deter companies from donating any drug that is within one year of its expiration date and to limit donations only to drugs specifically requested by recipients.

“We don’t accept outdated products,” said Martin Smith of Map International. “We ask for long-dated supplies, products that won’t expire for many months.”

Baker acknowledged the problems of outdated, inappropriate or otherwise unusable drugs and medical supplies in the ‘80s and ‘90s have led those involved in humanitarian aid to be more vigilant.

Baker said a coalition of agencies and pharmaceutical companies was formed in the late 1990s “to insure all donations sent out are appropriate, needed, and will be used.”

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(Knight Ridder Newspapers correspondent Harold Brubaker contributed to this report.)

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(c) 2005, The Philadelphia Inquirer.

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AP-NY-01-06-05 1741EST