Below some positive news about the Gilead effort to ensure that their range of antiretroviral medicines remain affordable during tough economic times.
Best regards, Joao
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Gilead Sciences Inc. said Friday it joined with statewide AIDS Drug Assistance Programs to help U.S. residents with HIV receive antiretroviral medicines. Foster City-based Gilead (NASAQ:GILD) said budget shortfalls [...]
Below some positive news about the Gilead effort to ensure that their range of antiretroviral medicines remain affordable during tough economic times.
Best regards, Joao
****
Gilead Sciences Inc. said Friday it joined with statewide AIDS Drug Assistance Programs to help U.S. residents with HIV receive antiretroviral medicines. Foster City-based Gilead (NASAQ:GILD) said budget shortfalls across the country are hitting AIDS Drug Assistance Programs, and the company is taking several actions, including additional discounts and extension of pricing freeze for HIV drugs Truvada, Viread and Emtriva through 2013. Gilead is also expanding eligibility for its patient assistance program and eliminating minimum payment requirements through its co-pay assistance program.
Source: Business Journal
That large multinational pharmaceutical companies would want to purchase Indian pharmaceutical companies is a worrying trend but not surprising. Western pharmaceutical firms are under considerable pressure to retain market share particularly as generic manufacturers continue expanding and many blockbuster pharmaceuticals come off patent. In a recent transaction, Abbott Laboratories purchased Piramal, India’s fourth-largest pharmaceutical company [...]
That large multinational pharmaceutical companies would want to purchase Indian pharmaceutical companies is a worrying trend but not surprising. Western pharmaceutical firms are under considerable pressure to retain market share particularly as generic manufacturers continue expanding and many blockbuster pharmaceuticals come off patent. In a recent transaction, Abbott Laboratories purchased Piramal, India’s fourth-largest pharmaceutical company for nine times their annual revenue – an unprecedented price in recent merger and acquisition history. The worrying element of this transaction is its implication for a pharmaceutical access in developing countries given that many governments and private markets in Africa and beyond depend on competitively priced Indian generic pharmaceuticals. Would the continuation of this purchasing trend in India spell the end of affordable pharmaceutical access in such countries? It may, but it somewhat depends on the ability of domestic and international regulatory agencies to ensure that anti-competitive behaviour does not prevent the monopolisation of the pharmaceutical industry.
Best regards, Joao
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INDIAN pharmaceutical companies that had grown in the past three decades to become a powerhouse of generic manufacturers have recently been feeling the heat of prolonged and difficult litigation in major Western markets. Finding solutions: In manufacturing, big pharma companies are already striking closer relationships with Indian generics to service global markets under marketing alliances Western pharmaceutical giants have also tried to protect their markets with other restrictive practices. Now it seems that these Western companies have found another way to fight off the Indian threat: They have persuaded the Indians to take the easier and profitable route of selling out to pharma giants. The latest case is the sale of Piramal’s 18.2 billion rupee (S$546 million) formulations business with 350 branded generics to Abbot Laboratories for 170 billion rupees. This is at a premium to its present market capitalisation of 108 billion rupees and the sale is valued at a high nine times annual revenue.
Source: Business Times
This article in Health Policy is a perspective on pharmaceutical aspects related to the health care reform currently underway in China. As the central government progressively move to adopt market mechanisms to improve the efficiency of the pharmaceutical supply chain, it will be interesting to observe whether the experience from other nations will be used [...]
This article in Health Policy is a perspective on pharmaceutical aspects related to the health care reform currently underway in China. As the central government progressively move to adopt market mechanisms to improve the efficiency of the pharmaceutical supply chain, it will be interesting to observe whether the experience from other nations will be used to inform Chinese pharmaceutical policy. The article covers opinions concerning medicine pricing, health insurance, the use of pharmacoeconomics and much more.
Best regards, Joao
**************
Source: Health Policy (In press)
Pharmaceutical supply chain in China: Current issues and implications for health system reform
Xuan Yua, b, Cheng Lia, Yuhua Shib and Min Yua
Objective
This article discusses the performance and distortions of pharmaceutical market in China and provides some reflections and policy implications for currently implemented reform.
Methods
This study is based on literature review and publicly available data by searching electronic databases and official web pages of the Chinese government on the internet.
Results
China’s economic transition and the incremental and piecemeal nature of health care reform have created a pharmaceutical market with a number of deficiencies, including ineffective supervision, mark-up price pattern, distortion of the price schedule, and lack of authoritative drug formulary.
Conclusions
We conclude that the root cause of the market and government failures is that higher-than-cost drugs preferred by all suppliers. New drug pricing mechanism is the key to the current pharmaceutical reform and should be implemented in coordination with other health system reforms.
MANILA, Philippines—The Department of Health is “working on” another round of drug price cuts before President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s term ends next June, according to DoH Secretary Esperanza Cabral.
However, Cabral said, they were “not making any promises.”
The first two rounds of voluntary price reductions by some 20 local pharmaceutical companies covered over 200 types [...]
MANILA, Philippines—The Department of Health is “working on” another round of drug price cuts before President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s term ends next June, according to DoH Secretary Esperanza Cabral.
However, Cabral said, they were “not making any promises.”
The first two rounds of voluntary price reductions by some 20 local pharmaceutical companies covered over 200 types of drugs and health care products sold in drug stores and hospital pharmacies nationwide.
Dr. Robert Louie So, head of the DoH’s National Center for Pharmaceutical Access and Management, said his office’s “initiatives in bringing down the prices of medicines do not stop.”
Meanwhile, a study conducted late last year by the non-government Center for Legislative Development (CLD) showed that despite drug price cuts of 50 to 70 percent, the Arroyo administration’s “access to cheap medicines” program benefited mainly the middle class and not the poor—its intended beneficiaries.
Read the full story by Jerry Esplanada
In the Philippines, the prices of at least 97 medicines to treat cancer, asthma and other common conditions will be reduced by 50% on average on March 31, saving patients at least 1 billion pesos ($22 million) a year, the government has said.
11 pharmaceutical manufacturers have agreed to cut their prices in this latest [...]
In the Philippines, the prices of at least 97 medicines to treat cancer, asthma and other common conditions will be reduced by 50% on average on March 31, saving patients at least 1 billion pesos ($22 million) a year, the government has said.
11 pharmaceutical manufacturers have agreed to cut their prices in this latest round of reductions, which will range from 14% to 72%.
The new round will bring the total number of medicines whose prices have fallen since last August to 200, accounting for around 12%-15% of the total market for essential drugs.
As well as cancer and asthma, the medicines included in the new round of cuts include treatments for hypertension, glaucoma, bladder and prostate conditions, hepatitis and mental health problems. They include a 50% price drop (from 202 pesos to 101 pesos per tablet) for Merck & Co/Schering-Plough’s cholesterol-lowerer Vytorin (ezetimibe and simvastatin), AstraZeneca’s cancer drug Zoladex (goserelin), which goes down from 10,400 pesos per 3.6mg injectable solution to 6,800 pesos, and the antihypertensive losartan, down from 43 pesos to 22 pesos.
The prices of some fluids for dialysis and other medical supplies will also be reduced, and older people will receive a further 20% discount on the prices of their medicines under the new Expanded Senior Citizens’ Law.
Most of the medicines involved are newer products, and which have disproportionately higher prices in the Philippines than elsewhere in the region, say government officials.
Read full article here by Lynn Taylor
Thanks for your editorial calling on Liberals to vote in favour of Bill C-393, a private member’s bill to reform Canada’s Access to Medicines Regime. With this bill Canada has an opportunity to once again take a leadership position on humanitarian issues.
Critics say the bill is not compliant with current WTO rules, but international [...]
Thanks for your editorial calling on Liberals to vote in favour of Bill C-393, a private member’s bill to reform Canada’s Access to Medicines Regime. With this bill Canada has an opportunity to once again take a leadership position on humanitarian issues.
Critics say the bill is not compliant with current WTO rules, but international trade law experts have testified that it is WTO compliant.
Critics say providing for compulsory licenses allowing generic companies to produce patent-protected drugs for export to developing countries would constitute a disincentive to brand-name pharmaceutical research. Nonsense. The entire continent of Africa constitutes less than 2 per cent of global pharmaceutical sales. CAMR currently provides for royalties to be paid to the patent-holding company. Bill C-393 does not change this.
Read more here
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