TWO prominent personalities sang paeans to the Generics Act of 1988 and trumpeted the law’s inroads in our country’s continuing fight for health and wellness.
Speaking during the third leg of the Philippine Generics Medicines Expo at the SM City of Davao this week, Eufe Tantia, a ranking officer of the Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Association of the Philippines, related how some PHAP members have been successful in their research for effective, yet affordable, medicines.
Why Tantia stressed on the inroads in research and development of cures for sexually-transmitted diseases like Chlamydia trachoma and HIV-Aids is between him and his economics, but we agree that breakthroughs such as these ought to make everybody happy (except probably some members of the medical profession).
Secretary Enrique Ona, whose Department of Health (DOH) is behind the nationwide expo series, had earlier claimed that more and more Filipinos are now into generic medicines, thanks to the 22-year old Generics Law. A recent Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey indicated that 55 percent of Filipinos now into generics.
However, a passionate advocate of generic medicines of long standing is far from impressed. Dr. Ruben G. Robillo, chief of the family-owned Calinan General Hospital, thinks that a 55- percent level of acceptance is still too low, considering that the Generics Law has been in existence for more than two decades.
Robillo lamented the fact that government has failed to lay the ground to encourage the establishment of a medicine manufacturing industry.
“What we have is a drug packaging sector, with some companies importing materials and packaging them into finished products for distribution and sale, the reason the cost of medicines has not been reduced as exspected,” he said.
Robillo charged some of his fellow medical practitioners for resisting generic medicines, afraid they would lose the perks and frebbies from pharmaceutical companies which have pampered them with free travels, goodies and cash rewards for continuously prescribing branded medicines despite an abundance of cheaper generic drugs in the market.
Robillo urged government to be more aggressive this time in promoting generic drugs and giving more incentives for joint projects with the private sector to invest in massive manufacture of generic drugs for the sake of our countrymen who have less in life and cannot afford expensive medicines.
That time has come and the noble medical profession shall, once and for all, be really, really true to its Oath of Hippocrates—thanks to the Generics Law.
