Why it is Important to Make Life-Saving Drugs available to the Poor

chillibreeze writer — Sunil Kumar

Many of us take for granted the fact that we only have to visit the neighborhood pharmacy to get our daily medicine. Has it occurred to us that a vast majority of human beings do not have this luxury? For them, the mere availability of basic medicines is something god sent; it is manna from heaven!

Billions of dollars are spent each year by global pharma giants in the west for the research and development of life saving medicines. Factories are being set up in emerging economies like India and China to produce low cost generic formulations. Supply chain hardware and software are upgraded to ensure that the quality of medicines does not deteriorate. Disruptions and vulnerabilities in production and logistics are monitored using new technology to ensure seamless supply. Despite these innovations, life-saving medicines often reach those who need them most when it is too late!

Let’s look at a recent example:

The Beijing Olympics was unprecedented in terms of infrastructure, revenue and audience. As in any event of this magnitude, the build up to the latest edition of the world’s biggest sporting event brought to the fore its negative fallout.

On one hand, the compulsion to reduce particulate pollution to tolerable levels forced officials to close down chemical units around the Chinese capital. On the other, the world’s increasing reliance on the manufacturing capabilities of this emerging superpower had tragic consequences. Factory closures meant that even pharmaceutical units had to down their shutters, and this affected the availability of life-saving medicines in no small measure.

While the athletes inhaled cleaner air, thousands of disease stricken people in Africa suffered for want of emergency relief. China is the largest manufacturer of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), which are the raw materials that go into the making of finished medicines. The Chinese authorities suspended the manufacture and export of several APIs until a month after the Games concluded. As a result, finished formulation manufacture by Indian and other pharma majors was seriously hit.

The Beijing clampdown resulted in a sharp increase in bulk drug prices including Penicillin, vitamins and diuretics. Relief agencies faced the difficult task of providing succor to millions of diseased souls in Sub-Saharan Africa as life-saving formulations were unavailable and priced out of reach of the needy.

Luckily, antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) meant for AIDS treatment did not meet with the same fate as Penicillin. There was a time when more than 90% of the HIV infected in Africa & Asia could not afford treatment. However, proactive initiatives by Indian generic drug manufacturers brought down AIDS treatment costs substantially. For example, Duovir-N, the world's first fixed-dose ARV priced earlier at $1000 for a month’s treatment was brought down by Indian makers to less than $100 per month. 70 % of ARVs used for AIDS relief in poor countries today come from India.

Such efforts are laudable due to the following reasons:

Developing countries almost totally depend on generic drugs as prices are 20-90% cheaper than branded products
Cost of financing healthcare in poor countries is mostly “out-of-pocket” as health insurance is non-existent
People in developing and under developed nations reduce spending on food and other basic needs to buy their medicines
Families are sucked down a whirlpool of financial commitments to treat chronic illnesses
The poor are forced to undergo partial treatment or no treatment at all, which leads to drug resistance, a common occurrence among the impoverished

Despite these efforts, there are still several barriers for the needy to access inexpensive medicines because:

The global pharmaceutical industry is yet to view access to medicines as a basic human right
Intellectual Property protection continues on rigid lines
The industry has so far failed to adopt differential pricing norms for medicines in order to benefit poor people in developing countries
There are inherent inefficiencies in the pharmaceutical supply chain which hinders cost saving efforts
High margins by the distribution system & taxes by local governments

The need of the hour is for pharmaceutical companies to embark upon a joint initiative to ensure that basic medicines are made universally accessible. After providing for margins necessary to offset discovery costs, companies need to take into account the fact that medicines have to be made affordable and available in all markets.

It could be worthwhile for organizations to realize that global consumption of medicines is gradually getting skewed towards the bottom end of the pyramid, represented by the masses. Differential pricing policies have to be implemented to cater to different income levels. Incorporating a social responsibility bottom line into corporate thinking and working in unison with a variety of stakeholders is of crucial importance.

The world looks up to the pharmaceutical industry to develop products at cost effective prices and also to market them ethically. And by doing so, play its part in the wider responsibility to improve the health of mankind.

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—About our writer:

Sunil,

"Currently with the Consulting industry; have been fortunate to have worked in a variety of roles: sales, marketing, corporate communications, international business, etc. Love travelling – been fortunate that my work has taken me across different geographies. And for me, writing is nirvana!"

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