Cutting costs & bacteria with Pharex Masunurin Value Packs

MANILA, Philippines - Doctors have often compared patients with children. You can talk all you want, but if they don’t want to listen, they won’t. In the same way that patients know they have to take their medicines to get better, they often forget to do so at the right time and throughout the right period.

Pharmaceutical company Pharex has launched a campaign called “Masunurin Advocacy” to help prevent the spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) among Filipinos, which is a type of drug resistance where bacteria is able to survive despite antibiotic treatment of the patient. The problem is global and all current antimicrobials are under threat of being useless. Imagine the huge costs to every patient if an ordinary bacteria can no longer be treated with antibiotics.

Pharex president and CEO Tomas Marcelo Agana III says that inappropriate and irrational use of antibiotics have resulted in increasing resistance for some of the most commonly encountered bacterial infections to the usual first-line antibiotics. He reminds everybody to take antibiotics only when their doctor tells them to.

Pharex medical director Dr. Amado Nazal says, “You take antibiotics when you’re considering an infection that is secondary to bacteria — like UTI, infections of the abdomen, lungs, and skin. Viral and bacterial infections can present the same manifestations and doctors prescribe antibiotics after doing a diagnostic tests or based on the clinical presentation of the patient.”

The pharmaceutical company now makes it easy for patients to be masunurin sa reseta ni doctor by offering specially packaged Masunurin Value Packs in resealable foil packaging packed as minimum full doses. “It’s ‘bring your therapy wherever you go,’” says Agana.

These medicines include Pharex amoxicillin 500 mg, 15 capsules, for P75, which gives patients a 31 percent savings if capsules were bought individually; Pharex cephalexin 500 mg, 15 capsules, for P150 (47 percent savings); Pharex ciprofloxacin, 500 mg, 10 tablets, P150 (25 percent savings); Pharex cloxacillin, 500 mg, 20 capsules, for P170 (52 percent savings).

Agana says that the Masunurin Value Packs not only give patients a big discount on their medicines but more importantly teach them to adhere to the doctor’s order. 

Rx: Masunurin Value Packs come in resealable foil packaging packed as minimum full doses. They not only give patients a big discount on their medicines but more importantly teach them to adhere to the doctor’s order.

“The pack is portable to carry around in your pocket or in your bag. Plus there is the printed message that it must be consumed within five days for full compliance.”

Indeed, surveys done on 116 patients who used the Pharex MVPs found that 83 percent of them saw the packs as helping them comply better with the full course requirement of their prescription. Eighty percent said the packaging was more convenient than the conventional packaging; 78 percent take their MVPs wherever they go; 66 percent don’t leave the packs at home and take a tablet or capsule only as instructed by the doctor; 82 percent do not feel the need to transfer the medicines to another container because the MVP is resealable; 77 percent said the packaging is hygienic and clean; 75 percent says they would rather buy this kind of packaging if it was available for all the medicines they need; and 84 percent said they would recommend the MVP to others.

Agana says Pharex has taken on this responsibility because it wants to help Filipinos avoid AMR, which will prove very expensive in the long run and fatal in some cases, so that first-line antibiotics for mild to moderate infections will continue to be effective. “We’re partnering with the health care community by putting the AMR advocacy at the heart of our corporate communications campaign,” he says.