Feisty Aphrodite Archives
New Thai Government Opposes Cheap Generic Drugs
The following is from the article written by Marwaan Macan-Markar, published by the Inter Press News Service Agency (IPS):
Shortly before he left office in January, Thailand’s former public health minister, Mongkol Na Songkhla, offered a gift of hope to the country’s poor. But that promise -- to supply cheaper, generic anti-cancer drugs --now hangs in the balance.
Mongkol’s push to secure the generic drugs by issuing ‘’compulsory licenses’’ (CLs) is being opposed his successor, Chiya Sasomsab, whose recent announcement to cancel a plan for affordable drugs to treat breast, lung, pancreatic and ovarian cancer has raised howls of protest from public health activists.
Some activists are even weighing the possibility of legal action against the new public health minister if he goes through with his plan. ‘’We have already begun discussing with lawyers about taking the minister to court for trying to revoke the decision of the last health minister,’’ Kannikar Kijitwatchakul, a leading activist for the Free Trade Agreement Watch (FTA Watch), told IPS. ‘’The new minister is trying to reverse a legitimate decision.’’
The significance of this odd turn of events has not been lost on other champions of cheaper generic drugs for the economically weak Thais, since Mongkol was a minister appointed in a government that came to power following a military coup, in September 2006. Chiya, by contrast, was named minister by a government popularly elected at the first parliamentary elections after the coup, in late December.
‘’It is ironic that a health minister appointed during a military regime should be better for the country than one appointed by an elected government,’’ Jon Ungpakorn, a former member of Thailand’s Senate, said in an IPS interview. ‘’Our present health minister has no regard for public health issues. He is behaving like the commerce minister.’’
Currently, an 80 mg injection for one of the drugs, Docetexel, for patients with lung and breast cancer, costs 25,000 baht (781 US dollars), while the generic equivalent costs 4,000 baht (125 dollars). And the cost of a 2.5 mg tablet of another drug, Letrozole, for breast cancer patients, is 230 baht (7.18 dollars), while the price of a generic version of the same tablet sells for 7 baht (20 US cents).
According to a health ministry study of the disease burden in the country for 2003, there were 5,215 news cases of breast cancer reported that year, while there were 9,830 new cases of lung cancer reported. Yet the rural and urban poor suffering from such cancers have no access to the brand name drugs available on the market, doctors reveal.
In fact, the stakes here are much higher than the obvious question: Is democracy bad for public health in Thailand? For this South-east Asian nation has emerged as the battleground in a tussle to secure cheap generic drugs for the poor that will have implications across the Global South.
Read the entire article here.
