"Wrong focus" for Philippines drug debate

The health care debate in the Philippines generally, and issues surrounding access to drugs in particular, are "focusing on the wrong issues, and [have] become more about politics than patients," according to a report by an international think-tank.

The report is published in the Campaign for Fighting Diseases Bulletin, produced by the London, UK-headquartered the International Policy Network. Philip Stevens, the director of the CFD project, said that it was not surprising that drug prices have become the subject of a hot political controversy. He admitted: "who wants to hand over large sums of hard-earned cash to pay for drugs when in other countries they are either cheaper or free?"

The apparently obvious policies of weakening patents and allowing parallel importation are not, Mr Stevens warns, the right choices for the Philippines government. He notes: "take the example of India. Since 1975, that country had weak intellectual property laws, in the belief that it would drive down the price of medicines. It certainly did that, but did it make the Indian people any healthier?"