Tuesday, February 13, 2007 Speak out: Cheaper medicines By Akbayan Partylist
AKBAYAN Party List welcomes and commends the members of the Senate for passing to second reading Senate Bill 2263.
The bill seeks to amend the existing Intellectual Property Code, to give the government more power to regulate the cost of medicines in the country where prices are reported to be the second highest in Asia.
This very recent development is significant and the eventual passage of the bill will benefit the impoverished majority of our people. Akbayan strongly supports such legislation for it will allow the importation of cheaper medicines from countries like Pakistan, India and Thailand.
It would make the production of cheaper medicines easier in the country by limiting patents protection for essential drugs. It would likewise allow research for the production of patented essential drugs, which would give local companies a chance to introduce cheaper versions of a medicine as soon as its patent expires.
This legislation will also reduce the monopoly of big pharmaceutical companies, which control more than 90 percent of the market share in the Philippines. Despite the fact that majority of the medicines sold in our country are already off-patent, branded products here are more expensive than their counterpart in other Asian countries.
Take as example a medicine for bronchitis that is sold in India for a sum equivalent to P132.38 and in Pakistan for P68.88. Here, it is sold by the same pharmaceutical company for P315.00.
The disturbing truth in this is that many of the overpriced medicines here are crucial to address leading causes of mortality and morbidity.
Civil society group, Cut the Cost, Cut the Pain Network (3CPNET), reported that a medicine for hypertension is sold here by an international pharmaceutical company for P44.75 while the same product is being sold in India seven times cheaper.
The same pharmaceutical company had filed a case against the government to prevent the sale of the low-cost version of the drug.
Big pharmaceutical companies are manipulating the flawed intellectual property laws to make a killing in the country that is known as the “sick man of Asia.”
We urge the Senate to finally pass the bill. Likewise, we call on the Lower House to do the same before the end of the 13th Congress.
