Cheaper quality medicine, a myth

It’s bitterly ironic that despite the enactment of the highly-touted “cheaper medicines” law – RA 9502 or the Universally Accessible Cheaper and Quality Medicine Act – there are medicines especially noted “branded” drugs whose prices are stiffly beyond the reach of the poor.

The law has hardly made an impact at all in alleviating the sickly poor, except slightly perhaps for the so-called “across the counter” pharma products. Usually they are for common colds, headaches, fever, toothaches, body malaise, and such similar non-serious ailments. Sadly, they don’t suffice for grave health problems, say, cancer, diabetes, hypertension, renal failure, TB, and such other death-threatening diseases which often need proven quality “branded” medicines that medical specialist practitioners prescribe to be highly curative and effective.

And even the over-blown “cheaper medicines” across the counter have so far not exhaustively reached, and therefore inaccessible to, the poverty-stricken poor patients in every barangay, much less the far-flung rural villages and mountain barrios. The “botika ng barangay” (BNB) program has hardly covered the entire length and breadth of the archipelago, perhaps only over 10% of the entire countryside.

In Central Visayas as a typical example, DOH-7 reports that functional BNBs have not penetrated the law’s principal target of every nook and cranny. In Cebu, of the reported 1,195 barangays, there are only 261 BNBs, or 21.9%; in Bohol there are 155 BNBs out of 1,141 barrios, or 13.5%; in Negros Oriental, the reported 561 barrios have 94 BNBs, or 16.7%; and in Siquijor, the 9 BNBs out of 134 barangays only covers 6.7%.

Besides, the BNBs drugs supply as cheap generic medicines over the counter are limited to ascorbic acids, ferrosulfate, mefenamic acid, paracetamol, generics for hypertension, anti-diabetic, and anti-asthmatic. Only limited to two selected prescriptions are antibiotics, namely amoxicillin and cotrimoxazole. Mostly, such drug generics suffice as relievers or panacea.

Aside from limited BNB coverage of the entire country, availability of “quality” drugs to answer for healing of serious ailments as prescribed by specialists, is absent from the BNBs.

Well, there’s that assurance of the Dept. of Health (DOH) that the cheaper and quality drugs would be fully implemented in two years time. Is this promise different from the promise repeatedly made, to wipe out insurgency in two years, then three years, and still ongoing?

One still recalls the original senatorial election platform of then erstwhile Dept. of Trade and Industry (DTI) secretary Mar Roxas III. Yes, upon assuming as senator, he would work out to enact the cheaper medicine bill that lagged interminably, not until his second term did it pass.

Another Roxas promise, as well as by Sec. Pagdanganan of the Philippine International Trading Corporation (PITC) that the law includes “parallel importation of patented or branded medicines from manufacturing countries where they’re sold at cheaper prices”. But, the stark reality is that PITC, or whichever government agency, has reneged on that promise.

Prices of these specialized drugs prescribed by attending physicians sourced outside, like the USA, India, and Israel, are way, way up high. Their domestic prices range from 500% to more than 1000% dearer in pesos. Senior citizens including retirees feeling the pinch of declining health, have their meager pensions short of their medical needs.

And so, one expects that the many 2010 presidential wannabes, including Senator Mar Roxas, will anytime now, promise to, again, work for “parallel importation” of branded/patented medicines from foreign sources, affordable to the poor.

And, as usual, none would deign to recall, or attempt to work on such promise. And so, the cycle goes on and on, like an old refrain.

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