Lower prices of childhood cancer drugs sought

MANILA, Philippines – Sen. Pia Cayetano lamented recently that eight cancer-stricken Filipino children die each day the government fails to bring down prices of childhood cancer drugs.

“This translates to around 2,500 deaths every year,” said Cayetano, chair of the Senate Committee on Social Justice and co-sponsor of the Universally Accessible Cheaper and Quality Medicine Act (RA 9502), citing statistics from Cancer Warriors Foundation (CWF), a nationwide support group for children with cancer.

Cayetano also asked the Department of Health (DOH) to immediately act on reports that childhood cancer drugs in the country remain very expensive and inaccessible to most families of children afflicted with cancer, despite the passage of the cheaper medicine law last year.

Using price comparison data collated by CWF, she noted how the cost of some essential childhood cancer drugs here is much more, some by almost ten times or 1,000 percent, compared to their selling prices in India.

According to CWF, Mercaptupurine costs P40 per tablet in the Philippines, but the same medicine can be bought for only P4.22 in India.

Big price disparities can also be noted for Leunase (P2,500/piece locally, P1,400/piece in India); Metotrexate (P200/vial locally, P50.74/vial in India); Metorexate (P13/tablet locally, P1.52 in India); Vincristine (P450/vial locally, P95.92/vial in India); Cyclophosphamide (P275/vial locally, P61.50/vial in India); and Doxorubicin (P450/vial locally, P102.61/vial in India).

Cayetano said only two out of every ten Filipino children diagnosed with cancer survive, largely due to the prohibitive cost of medicine.

In contrast, she noted that the opposite happens in industrialized countries like the United States, Japan and Europe, where the survival rate is much higher at eight out of ten.

CWF estimates the number of Filipino children diagnosed with cancer at around 3,500 annually. About half of these cases are leukemia, a form of cancer in which the body produces too many white blood cells.

Cayetano said the CWF brought the issue to her attention recently, as April is “Cancer in Children Awareness Month” in the events calendar of the DOH.

Last year, she said the DOH had committed to undertake parallel importation of lower-priced drugs through the Philippine International Trading Corp. (PITC) and include childhood cancer medicine in its essential drugs list.