Community Doctors Urge Implementation of Generics Law

On Affordable Medicine Act and the proposed generics prescribing of HB 2844: Position Paper of the Community Medicine Practitioners and Advocates Association (COMPASS)

Having passed the Senate and Congress in separate discussions, HB 2844 and SB 1658 or more popularly known as the Affordable Medicine Act is but a stone throw away from its passage.

We believe that the public should not be misled on the issues that hound the Affordable Medicine Act prior to its passage. While legislators and opinion-makers debate on the provision that removes the doctor’s prerogative of putting brand names aside from generic names in their prescription, the matter must not be interpreted as a doctor-versus-patient issue. Rather it must be viewed as a strong public clamor for safe, needed and efficacious medicine against the government’s lack of decisive steps to ensure that the majority of poor patients are given access to quality and affordable medicines.

If any legislation that aims to provide accessible and affordable medicine is to be meaningful to ordinary Filipinos, then the real issues at hand are…creating a National Drug Industry, protecting and giving incentives to local drug manufacturers, and serious implementation of the National Drug Policy (including the Generics Act) and creating an accountable Drug Price Regulatory Board. We at COMPASS believe that unless these essential issues are enjoined with full public participation, then the objective of addressing a long-standing problem will again be missed.

The Generics Act of 1988 should seriously be implemented by the government. Moreover, we believe that the public should be well informed about the Generics Law and Rational Drug Use (RDU) through massive information campaigns and education drives.

COMPASS subscribes to the use of generic medicine. We are for the use of safe and affordable generic medicine that have gone through extensive research and testing for efficacy. The prescription of what a doctor believes is a potent drug for a certain illness, the preference for specific drugs or regimens, is borne of an earnest desire to heal and is based on the physician’s commitment to the overall well-being of his or her patient.

The existence and proliferation of substandard drugs is a sad and undeniable reality in the Philippine society. A more tragic reality is the continued failure of government’s regulating agencies, the Department of Health (DOH) and the Bureau of Food and Drugs (BFAD), in regulating the quality and potency of essential medicine. Proof of this is the continuous proliferation of ineffective, substandard, and potentially harmful drugs.

Until government strictly enforces its own regulations and closely monitors the manufacture of essential medicine, we cannot blame thousands of doctors and patients if they continue to have preferences in their choices medicine to use or prescribe. This can only be done through nationalization of the drug industry, where the government can have direct control over the production and distribution of essential medicines for Filipinos. Only then can safe and efficacious generic medicine can be accessible to millions of marginalized patients.

Signed:

Edelina de la Paz, MD Ramon Paterno, MD

Sylvia de la Paz, MD Julie P. Caguiat, MD