When current statistics show that more than 60 percent of the population cannot afford the medication against illnesses long eradicated in other countries, the government has to resort to importing drugs, generating five to tenfold savings than buying them from multinational companies in the country.
"Prices of some branded, off-patent drugs here are 40 to 700 percent higher compared to other Asian countries," said Dr. Timoteo Badoy Jr., chief of the Policy and Advocacy Division of the Bureau of Food and Drugs during the recent 39th anniversary celebration of the Philippine Society of Hospital Pharmacists (PSHP) held at the Manila Diamond Hotel.
Badoy told members of the PSHP led by its president Normita Leyesa of the Makati Medical Center that the government made a trial importation of P1.5 million worth of branded medicines from India last November.
Distributed in seven government hospitals nationwide, these pharmaceuticals could have cost nearly P5 million had they been sourced in the Philippines through the local manufacturers and distributors of multinational companies.
The health and trade departments, through the latter’s Philippine International Trading Corp., formed a task force last year and went to several Asian countries, including India, to compare prices of identical preparations manufactured and distributed for the same multinational companies.
And as some items differ by more than 1,000 percent, the second importation early this year worth P5 million could be valued locally at P50 million.
"Government’s parallel importation of drugs is not the ultimate solution to lower prices. But for as long as prices remain high and the difference is something that our people cannot afford, government will continue the program," Badoy clarified.
Leyesa, on the other hand, stressed the need for pharmacists’ cooperation with government, explaining the merging concerns in pharmacy practice now redound to dispensing efficacious and affordable drugs to the poor.