Pharma assurances on drug affordability

The multinational pharmaceutical industry has given some measure of assurance to parties concerned with the impact of a Free Trade Agreement with the USA on access to affordable medicines, reports the Malaysian newspaper Sun2Surf. Among the main concerns over the current FTA negotiations between Malaysia and the USA were on data exclusivity and its effect on access to affordable medicines, especially anti-retroviral drugs for people living with HIV/AIDS.

Pfizer Malaysia managing director John Latham, speaking at a forum in September, highlighted the positive growth of the generics industry in countries such as Australia and Singapore after an FTA with the USA.

The US-Australia FTA was signed in 2004. According to data from IMS Health, generic medicines accounted for 15% of the Australian government's spending on drugs in 2005 when in 1994, it was just 2%. This is expected to rise to 25% in the long-term and hit a market value of 4.5 billion ringgit ($1.22 billion) by 2010.