As I See It : Filipinos to drug firms: 'Maawa naman kayo'

By Neal Cruz
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the May 4, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

I GO regularly to a Mercury Drug store to buy my maintenance medicines and always there would be a few customers beside me at the crowded counter who would hand the pharmacist a doctor's prescription and wait apprehensively while the pharmacist adds the total cost of the medicines. Usually, it would be only a week's supply of medicines or just a few pills. When the pharmacist tells him or her the cost of the medicine, the customer would look at the crumpled bills clutched in his or her hand, think a while and say, "Isa na lang [One only]." Sometimes, the money won't be enough for even one pill, and the customer would say dejectedly, "Huwag na lang [Never mind]," and slowly walk away.

At those times, I wish the foreign executives of the multinational pharmaceutical companies selling those expensive medicines were there to see the look on the faces of my fellow Filipinos as they walk out of the drugstore without any or with just one pill of the medicine needed by a sick family member.

Needless to say, the sick child or wife or mother won't get well because the family can't afford the needed medicine.

Indeed, many patients die needlessly because they stop their medication before they have taken the required dosage to kill the bacteria or virus. They can't afford all the medicines. The bacteria get a little immunity from the medicine and it would require a stronger dosage to kill them, which of course the patient cannot afford. So the disease gets worse until it kills him, all because the pharmaceutical company is too greedy.

Ironically, the company's business is to manufacture and sell medicines to save and cure sick people but in the unkindest cut of all, it is this company, not the disease, that is killing patients with its costly medicines.

And yet, the medicines can be sold for very much less and the company will still have a handsome profit. A survey has shown that prices of medicines here are at least five times more than those sold in other Asian countries. Yes, medicine prices in the Philippines are the highest in the region and in many other parts of the world. And yet, the Philippines is a Third World country where two-thirds of the population live below the poverty level.

The foreign executives ordering the high prices will never see the Filipinos buying their products because they live and work in their home countries. It is they who have ordered the executives of their branches here to price their products as much as the market can bear. The foreign executives assigned here have no choice but to obey the orders or else...

There the situation stands, and that was the subject of last Monday's Kapihan sa Manila forum where former Health Secretary Alberto Romualdez, Rep. Ferjenel Biron (also a doctor of medicine), Sen. Alfredo Lim, and Undersecretary Teodoro Rivera of the Philippine International Trading Corp. (PITC) beat their brains for a solution. Representatives of the multinational pharmaceutical corporations had been invited but after initially accepting the invitation, they backed out when they learned there would be panelists from the other side. The format of the Kapihan is to have all sides of a controversy together so that they can all present their sides, and what I have learned from the 20 years of the Kapihan (yes, Kapihan sa Manila is 20 years old, older than people power) is that the party that shies away from the confrontation is usually the guilty party.

Anyway, Romualdez said free market forces do not work for the pharmaceutical industry because there is no balance between supply and demand. It is the supply side that dictates the prices, he said. That is why prices are artificially high, and the government should step in. It is the duty of the government to do something to help the people, he emphasized.

Biron said the government should establish price controls. He and almost a hundred other congressmen have co-sponsored a bill that would create a Drug Prices Regulation Board that would set maximum retail prices for medicine.

Lim said he would file a counterpart bill in the Senate.

Rivera said the PITC is importing inexpensive medicines from India, Pakistan and Vietnam and selling them here to give Filipinos a break. In fact, it is helping set up a chain of Botica ng Bayan drugstores all over the country to sell their parallel importations and locally sourced branded and generic medicines, to add outlets to the government hospitals and clinics. It is now accepting applications for accreditation from private individuals and corporations, cooperatives and NGOs, labor unions and employees' associations, religious and other groups.

The PITC now has a list of 120 prescription and over-the-counter medicines to be sold to the public. It will soon publish the list and their prices in newspapers (they're very cheap). Patients should ask for them at the drugstores.

There is an ongoing propaganda campaign by the multinationals against PITC's parallel importations. It brands these government imports are "counterfeit," banking on the Filipino's wrong impression that "counterfeit" is the same as "fake." Wrong. These are the same medicines, the same formulations and dosages, the same strengths, the same brands made by the same companies as those sold here by the multinationals. They are genuine. The only difference is that they were manufactured in other countries, not here. And they are very much cheaper.