5 - The private life of numbers

Summary

In August 2001, announcements of “Anxiety Disorders Week,” an information campaign designed to bring patients to hospitals where they could consult with experts, appeared in a number of Buenos Aires newspapers. “One of every four Argentines suffers from them,” one article proclaimed: “panic attacks, phobias. Specialists say that they are increasing; factors such as insecurity or incertitude with respect to the future can influence them.” The reference to uncertainty and insecurity was apt: the country was entering its fourth year of recession, the unemployment rate had reached 20 percent, the widely tracked index of riesgo-pais or “country-risk” was spiking to record levels each day. And the campaign was successful beyond the expectations of its sponsors: the city's hospitals were inundated with patients complaining of symptoms of stress. The articles did not mention that the campaign had been co-sponsored by the domestic pharmaceutical firm Bago, makers of Tranquinil-brand alprazolam. Since in Argentina it was still prohibited to market a drug directly to the general public, an alternative was to “grow the market” by making general practitioners and patients more aware of the illness. In an article that appeared two months later in the daily Clarín on the role of the growing economic crisis in increasing tranquilizer sales, a Bago sales manager reported that August had been a month of record growth for Tranquinil. The piece was subtitled, “Illnesses brought on by the crisis are increasing medical visits and anxiolytic use.”