"Bakit kailangang bumili pa ng mga mamahaling gamot mula sa ibang bansa kung kaya naman nating gawin dito? Mas marami ang matutulungan at matitipid kung tayo mismo ang gumagawa ng mga gamot lalo na ngayong pandemya."
Speaker Lord Allan Velasco is looking to the local pharmaceutical industry to boost the country’s capability in the fight against the pandemic, saying that local companies “play a vital role in helping provide much-needed medicines for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19.”
Accordingly, Velasco appealed to the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) to improve the efficiency and promptness of its
procedures, specifically concerning the applications of local pharmaceutical
companies for Certificate of Product Registration (CPR) and Emergency Use
Authorization (EUA) permits.
“While we understand the need for thorough study of drugs
and medicines, we need to balance it out by making compliance easier for local
pharmaceutical firms by cutting out unnecessary red tape and redundant
requirements," the House leader said.
He added: “There are countless reports of local drug
manufacturers whose products have been stuck in regulatory limbo for years.
These bureaucratic impediments are something that we need to eliminate,
especially during a public health crisis.”
Deputy Speaker Bernadette Herrera echoed Velasco’s
sentiments. "The spectrum of medical therapies to treat COVID-19 is
growing and evolving rapidly, and the FDA has actually allowed some of these
therapies to be used for emergencies," she said.
"Sadly, while they can be prescribed by doctors, these
medicines are often impossible to obtain,” Herrera said. “Local manufacturers
are ready, willing, and able to produce them, but it takes the FDA an
inordinately long time to process and approve their requests."
Based on computations from the current FDA checklist, it
will take a company a minimum of eight months to complete the requirements
needed for the issuance of a CPR. According to business insiders, however, CPRs
usually take far longer than that, if they are even issued at all.
"Even from a trade and industry perspective, it is
alarming that a number of local pharma producers have actually been forced to
close, simply because they could no longer afford to wait for the FDA to grant
them their permits," Herrera lamented. "Can you just imagine how much
this dilemma is magnified, now that actual lives are at stake?"
The party-list solon further brought up the possibility of
instituting government support for the beleaguered industry. “There is an
actual and realistic opportunity for us to produce our own medicines, that are
at par with the ones we are importing,” Herrera pointed out.
“We should throw our support behind these local pharma
companies, because the ripple effect will benefit public health, job creation,
and overall economic activity,” she added.
Herrera said this can be done through direct grants from
Bayanihan 3, soft loans or credit subsidies, or tax considerations. “Now is the
perfect time to look into these options, and to maximize our resources,"
she concluded.
This article first appeared in Philippine Manila Times FB page
