Quality affordable medicines for all

The Manila Times Internet Edition
By Senator Mar Roxas

(Excerpted from the sponsorship speech on Senate Bill No. 2263 to make the laws on patents, trade names and trade marks more responsive to the health needs of the Filipino people delivered at the Senate session hall on August 16, 2006)

In every nook and corner of our archipelago, we have sick citizens who are sick not because there is no cure for their ailment, not because they haven’t been able to see a doctor for diagnosis; they are sick because they cannot afford the medicine that has been prescribed for them and which will make them well.

Kung si Juan de la Cruz ay tumaas ang presyon ng dugo at kinailangan niyang bumili ng gamot na Norvasc, mabibili niya ito sa Mercury sa halagang P44.75.

Pero ang taga-India, na katulad ni Juan na may mataas na presyon, ay makakabili ng Norvasc, na walang pinagkaiba sa binebenta sa botika, sa halagang P5.00 lamang.

Norvasc, priced at P44.75 in the Philippines, sells for the equivalent of P5.00 in India.

Kung ang misis ni Juan de la Cruz ay may impeksyon, tulad ng respiratory tract infection, upang gumaling, kailangan niyang bumili ng Bactrim 400 sa pharmacia sa presyong P17.75 per tablet. Samantala, ayon sa Philippine International Trade Corporation (PITC), isang ahensya ng gobyerno, ang bawat tableta ng Bactrim 400 ay nabibili sa Pakistan sa halagang piso, at sa India, sa halagang 69 centavos.

Bactrim 400, priced at P17.75 per tablet in the Philippines, sells for the equivalent of P1 in Pakistan, and P0.69 in India.

Kung ang anak naman ni Juan de la Cruz ay may hika at kailangan ng Ventolin inhaler para lumuwag ang paghinga, mabibili ito ng kanyang magulang sa Mercury Drug Store ng P406 per inhaler.

Samantala, kahit sinong bata na hinika sa Bangkok, ay maaaring maibili ng kanyang magulang ng Ventolin Inhaler sa halagang P231 lamang.

Ventolin, priced at P406 in the Philippines, sells for the equivalent of P231 in Thailand.

What is so special about Thailand, India, Pakistan and other countries across and beyond our region, that these affordable medicines are available to their citizens while we Filipinos have to pay many more times for the same medicines?

I wish government can simply decree lower prices and have it come about. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done. There is no magic cure, no magic wand, to wave or wish this problem away.

Today, we make another attempt to address this problem and thus give life to the public health provisions of our Constitution, and assure our people that their welfare is uppermost in our minds.

Let me cite three major obstacles to our people’s access to affordable, quality medicines.

The first obstacle is the structure of the pharmaceutical industry.

The pharmaceutical industry in the Philippines sold around P85 billion worth of products last year. Roughly translated, this means approximately P1,000 for every man, woman and child in the country.

But unlike other countries, the industry here is characterized by extreme concentration of market power, in short, controlled by a handful of players.

The second obstacle has to do with the behavioral orientation of our consumers, doctors, and public institutions.

There must be continuing education on the Generics Law. Our consumers have yet to fully appreciate the value for money offered by generic substitutes. Our doctors and public health institutions must not negate the spirit of this law by failing to live up to their duty to inform their patients, particularly the poor, about generic substitutes.

The third and perhaps, biggest obstacle to affordable, quality medicines, is rooted in the protectionist provisions of existing law.

Certain provisions of the Intellectual Property Code have been misused over time such that profit trumps public interest.

Because of the highly technical and abstruse nature of the intellectual property system, the multinational pharmaceutical companies have dominated the application of the intellectual property law to the detriment of public welfare.

The principles that guided your committees in crafting this bill are:

(1) To promote greater competitiveness and responsiveness in the Philippine pharmaceutical industry with the least government intervention. We need to loosen the monopolistic or oligopolistic power that some multinational pharmaceutical companies have long enjoyed to the detriment of all Filipinos by broadening consumer access to the supply of medicines and by supporting the domestic generics industry.

(2) To adopt internationally accepted best practices that have made medicines more affordable and accessible in so many other countries around the world. To comply with the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and the DOHA Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health of the World Trade Organization (WTO). And,

(3) To increase the flexibility of government to anticipate and respond to various possible challenges to Philippine public health from global pandemics like bird flu or SARS and even to biological and/or chemical terror attacks.

In what manner does this bill accomplish what it sets out to do?

The salient features of Committee Report No. 79 containing SB No. 2263 are:

First, we shall amend Section 72.3 of the IPC in order to expressly adopt the “early working” doctrine. This refers to the process by which generic companies are allowed to experiment and test for regulatory approval of generic versions of a drug or medicine before its patent expires.

This will allow generic producers to get ready earlier so that they can start the production and sale of a generic drug shortly after its patent expires.

Second, we shall amend Section 72.1 of the IPC by adopting “the doctrine of international exhaustion of intellectual property rights” from the present domestic exhaustion principle currently applied in the Philippines.

Third, in order to more easily enforce the foregoing, CR No. 79 and SB No. 2263 seek to amend Section 147 of the IPC such that there will be an exception to the application of trademarks and tradename restrictions when applied to parallel imports.

Fourth, the bill amends Section 22.1 of the IPC by disallowing the issuance of another patent for new uses of an existing substance that has already been patented.

Fifth, the bill amends Section 74 of the IPC, “Use of Invention by Government,” to remove the requirement for government to go through the long and tedious compulsory licensing process so that government may avail of the medicine for public health reasons in a more timely manner.

The IPC requires the government to go through the cumbersome compulsory licensing procedures before it may use any patent. A review of Supreme Court cases on compulsory licensing would show that it takes 6 to 8 years before an entity has a clear approval to do the same. The health of our people cannot be made to wait this long especially in times of emergencies. The government must have the power to do this outright without need for a lengthy process.