PHM-Exch> Philippines seeks further drug price cuts

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: Meghana Bahar meghana at haiap.org

The Philippines’ government has announced a second round of pharmaceutical
price cuts, and is asking drug majors for “voluntary” reductions of up to
50%.

More than 21 products could be on the market at reduced prices by the end of
March, according to Alexander Padilla, undersecretary at the Department of
Health. An initial deadline of January 14 for drugmakers to submit their
price reductions has now been extended to January 22, and while the
government says it would prefer that these are voluntary, it is prepared to
impose reductions, as it did last August for five essential medicines. At
that time, the prices of 16 medicines were also lowered voluntarily by their
makers.

The Pharmaceutical Health Care Association of the Philippines (PHAP), which
represents multinational drugmakers in the country, has been asked to submit
to the Department a list of price cuts for products made by its 51
member–companies, and that these should be the top-selling and most
expensive products with little in the way of generic competition.

According to PHAP, last August’s round of price reductions led to 600 job
losses in the industry, and it is urging the government to explore ways of
increasing access to medicines for its 90 million population other than
price intervention.

The prices of many drugs in the Philippines are considerably higher than in
the rest of Southeast Asia, and the aim of the price reductions is to bring
them more into line with those in neighbouring countries, the government
says.

Meantime, earlier this month French drug major Sanofi-Aventis announced that
it was cutting the prices of its products to treat diseases such as diabetes
and cancer by as much as 50% in the Philippines and Indonesia, and that it
plans to introduce similar price cuts in other Southeast Asian nations.

By Lynne Taylor

Source link:
http://www.pharmatimes.com/WorldNews/article.aspx?id=17242&src=EWorldNews
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