There’s going to be a tsunami

A couple of months ago, the driver of an associate came to him asking for help because one of his children was very sick. This driver barely made enough money to feed his family, and so he couldn’t afford to buy the simple antibiotics the child needed. This associate readily lent the driver some money to buy the much needed medicine – but by then, it was too late. The boy had died that same night. What started out as a simple flu eventually turned into deadly double pneumonia that caused the death of this poor eight-year-old boy, because it took the driver so long before he could get enough courage to borrow money.

These stories are duplicated a hundred times all over the country everyday, where people could not even buy the most basic kind of medicine for their illness. A large number of Filipinos live on the borderline of extreme poverty, and these people are the most vulnerable to illness and disease for obvious reasons. When they get sick, visiting the doctor is not exactly at the top of their list. Even if they do manage to visit the health center doc – chances are, they won’t buy the medicine that has been prescribed simply because they couldn’t afford it.

It’s bad enough we have so many poor people in this country, but it’s even worse when they could not even buy the simple medicines that, more often than not, spell the difference between life and death. And if you want to talk about human rights, there’s nothing more basic than this: the right to live. Those who will deny others this right must examine their consciences. It all boils down to this – the time has come for government to take a strong hand and give Filipinos the basic right to live by lowering the cost of medicines to make it more affordable and accessible to everyone.

This is precisely what Sen. Mar Roxas is trying to push with his bill, which would make medicines more affordable for Filipinos by strengthening the implementation of the generics law and amending the existing intellectual property code of the Philippines. During the late 1990s, many countries have already expressed their concern about the impact of intellectual property rights on access to medicines, since these rules have enabled some multinational pharmaceutical companies to keep generic medicines out of the market. Even the United States has come under fire for putting intellectual property rights above the welfare of people.

Mar’s proposed legislation (Senate Bill 2263, co-authored by Sen. Pia Cayetano) has already been approved by the Senate on its third and final reading last January 31. Its counterpart bill in Congress has also been certified as urgent by GMA, along with the Anti-Terrorism bill. The "Cheap Medicine Bill of 2007" has passed second reading. Congressman Ronnie Zamora has promised my brother, Dr. Alberto Romualdez, that the bill would be approved on its third reading when Congress convenes in June. My brother is one of those strongly supporting the bill of Mar Roxas. When he became Health Secretary during the term of Joseph Estrada, he pushed for the use of generic medicines – and ended up getting sued by big pharmaceutical companies for this difficult endeavor.

Nevertheless, we understand where these multinational companies are coming from, considering the resources and the number of years they have poured into research for the development of medicines especially for critical diseases. Billions are spent in clinical trials, and one could not question the amount of work put into it by doctors and scientists just to make sure the medicines reach their desired efficacy. I also understand their concern about the market getting flooded by fake, low quality medicines if government becomes too flexible with intellectual property rights. But the right to live must take precedence over any kind of right to intellectual property.

I have advised many of my friends in the pharmaceutical industry to be realistic. The tide is changing, and they can no longer ignore the fact that generic or cheaper medicine is something that is inevitable – it is the call of the times. Government has a responsibility to secure the health of its populace, and part of that is to make sure that Filipinos have access to more affordable but good quality medicines. All over the world, governments are facing the inevitable – seen during the unanimous enactment of the Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health six years ago, which said intellectual property laws should not stop countries from protecting the health of their constituents.

If medicines become so costly, then obviously majority of Filipinos who are poor will not be able to buy anyway, so what’s the point in fighting this pending bill? Clearly, there is a growing need and demand for cheaper generic medicines. It’s like a tide that is fast rising and rolling towards the shore. I strongly suggest to pharmaceutical companies – ride on this tide and find ways to lower the cost of medicines. They can learn from what the British firm GlaxoSmithKline is doing with its ValueHealth program, where the prices of certain commonly used medicines have been lowered. It’s a good way to start. Pharmaceutical companies can no longer stem the tide. With the number of poor Filipinos continually growing, they must not turn a blind eye to the warning signs. As one little British girl told her mother in Phuket, Thailand in December 2004 upon seeing the water receding from the shoreline, just before a giant tidal wave came crashing: "There’s going to be a tsunami, mummy."

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