DURBAN - DISCUSSIONS are taking place at a global level with the World Health Organisation (WHO), pharmaceutical industries and other stakeholders as to what constitutes a fair price for cancer medicines.
Professor Fatima Suleman at UKZN stated this during a webinar hosted by University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) and World Health Organization Collaboration Centre (WHO CC) for Pharmaceutical Policy and Evidence Based Practice on Tuesday.
Suleman highlighted the imbalance of medicine access and possible solutions to ensure equitable access.
“The cost of the whole cancer care pipeline and hidden costs of chemotherapy and transport are not factored into the cancer care. Medicines play a big role, even those on medical schemes. It can force people to go into bankruptcy,” she said.
Suleman said South Africa needed to look at strengthening its pricing policies by looking at ways to mitigate affordability for the population.
“We need more transparency on pricing approaches and price settings.”
Dr Andrew Gray, senior lecturer at UKZN, said cancer medicine access in South Africa had been problematic from an availability and affordability point of view for some time now.
He said the public sector treatment list was plagued with the non-availability and unaffordability of essential medicines. The private sector, on the other hand, had access to all of the latest treatments that remained out of reach for most patients, he said.
The Cancer Alliance has released a report on the Access to Cancer Medicine in the public and private sectors.
Access to Medicine Campaign project manager Salomé Meyer said patents blocked generic availability which led to inequitable access for those who needed it most. Meyer said the prices of many cancer medicines were high and that in the absence of insurance coverage, treatment was unaffordable for many patients.
“Medicine cannot be equated to the same as public goods – that is what is actually happening currently. It is equated with exactly the same principles. It is time we revisit tender regulations and look at specifically what is blocking access for critical medicines. We also say the oncology market is too small to have two systems for procurement where the private sector takes preference with the industry.”
Meyer called for an online medicines portal that was open, transparent and also a collaboration between role players that was managed in real time.
WHO Dr Kiu Siang Tay said: “Countries should look at system efficiency and try to adjust the price according to the competition landscape. We need to enforce price caps for medicines with or without progressive reductions of prices over time.”
Health Justice Initiative director Fatima Hassan said it was embarrassing to be part of a global community and country where there was such a shameful access situation.
“Multinational companies – this is when we come to an intersection between business and human rights – claim that the competition commission in SA has no jurisdiction over them. They refuse to disclose in full the research and development costs. Who gets incentives to get a 20-year monopoly? Whose research and development was it? You won’t know the full extent of public institution support unless you have full transparency and disclosure,” she said.
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