THE health department has called on the public to use medicines rationally and to complete its prescribed treatment regimen geared towards wellness.
“Engaging in sports promotes wellness. Like sports and healthy lifestyles, compliance to medicines regimen is also wellness. If you take your prescribed medicines rationally and correctly, you will feel better, live longer, be more productive, and have a good quality of life,” Health Secretary Esperanza Cabral said.
As part of its advocacy for wellness, the Department of Health (DOH) recently launched its “Compliance to Medicines is Wellness” campaign at the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) compound.
It was witnessed and supported by PSC Chair Harry Angping, a key official in the promotion of wellness through sports in the country.
“Our efforts to bring down prices of medicines would be incomplete if people persist on not completing their treatment,” Cabral explained.
“One common malpractice is when patients stop completing antibiotic courses when their symptoms are gone because it costs too much money to complete a course. But this leads to antibiotic resistance which in turn pushes doctors to prescribe more expensive antibiotics later on,” she furthered.
The DOH earlier announced that a new round of price cuts for 98 types of drugs will be implemented on March 31.
The price reduction, which will be between 50 to 70 percent, is in line with the Cheaper Medicines Law.
Medicines whose prices will be cut include those for dialysis, cancer, prostatic disorders, asthma, depression, hypertension, among others.
The first round of price reductions happened August of 2009 where prices of more than 100 medicines were cut by half.
These lowered prices of medicines, according to Cabral, are due to initiatives by the government to engage the industry to the competition provided for by lower priced generics whether from local or from multinational sources.
“What we are promoting here are low cost medicines, whether branded or generic. These medicines offer competition that put pressure on high priced medicines to bring down their prices. Generic competition helps and even multinational companies now are geared towards having quality affordable generic lines for their products,” she added. (Kathrina Alvarez/Sunnex)