Shatāt-USA Palestine Mental Health Network joins the worldwide “No Teva” campaign, launched by Health Care Workers for Palestine and endorsed by the Palestinian BDS National Committee.
We ask our members, colleagues, and patients to stop buying Teva medicines wherever a safe alternative exists.
Teva Pharmaceutical Industries is one of the largest drug companies in the world, and it is Israeli. It is Israel’s largest company by operating income, and so provides the Israeli government with vast tax revenues. The Palestinian BDS National Committee designated Teva a boycott target in early 2024. The worldwide “No Teva” campaign, launched by Health Care Workers for Palestine and endorsed by the BDS movement, is organizing in Ireland, Belgium, Italy, and Spain. Health workers are leading it. In Dublin, about 470 staff at Beaumont Hospital and around 250 medical consultants across Ireland backed the call for the Health Service Executive to stop buying Teva medicines where alternatives exist. Join the BDS movement and make an impact!
Many of us, and many of our patients, take medicines made by Teva without knowing it. Teva makes generic medicines, the low-cost versions of common drugs, including many psychiatric medications. It also sells under other names. Its medicines are distributed under the names Teva, Tevagen, Actavis, Davur, Belmac, and Ratiopharm. In the UK, it also makes well-known over-the-counter products such as Sudocrem and Infacol.
How to boycott Teva
Boycotting Teva is simple, and most of the medicines it makes are made by other companies too. ethicalconsumer
Ask your pharmacist. Tell them you want to avoid Teva medicines and ask them to mark this on your file for all existing and future prescriptions. uplift
Ask your doctor. Your doctor and pharmacist can mark you as a No-Teva customer on your file. ethicalconsumer
Ask your pharmacy to go further. It can become a “Teva-last” pharmacy, making Teva the least preferred option so customers with new prescriptions are offered other brands first. uplift
Check over-the-counter products. Read the manufacturer’s name on the box.
Never stop a medication. If Teva is the only maker of a medicine you need, keep taking it. Health Care Workers for Palestine emphasizes that no one should discontinue any medication if Teva is the only option. Continue taking it, and ask your pharmacist to order in a non-Teva alternative. iacenteruplift
For clinicians
Prescribers can ask for non-Teva versions where a clinically equivalent alternative exists. Clinics, practices, and training institutes can raise Teva with the pharmacies and suppliers they use. For a mental health body, this is one concrete way to act on the call to become an Apartheid Free Zone, which includes pledging not to purchase from the companies most complicit in Israel’s violations of Palestinian rights.
Learn more
Read the call and sign it here.
