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Manila: President Gloria Arroyo signed a new bill that allows importation of medicines from countries where foreign multinationals offer them at affordable rates, making medicines more accessible to poor Filipinos.
"With the signing of the Cheaper Medicines and Quality Bill into a law, we have completed our legislative reforms in bringing affordable medicines to the people," Arroyo said during a ceremony in southern Luzon's Laguna Provincial Hospital where her "half-priced medicines program" has been implemented since 2001.
No roadblocks
"The law removes all roadblocks to parallel importation of medicines. Individuals, organisations, retail chains, and private hospitals registered with the Bureau of Food and Drugs can import medicines and sell them cheap to the public," explained Senator Manuel Roxas III, the bill's principal author.
The Philippine government has targeted to import medicine from India and Pakistan where foreign multinationals offer them at cheaper rates, a source told Gulf News.
The law also compels local drug stores to offer cheap medicines that were accessed through parallel importation, with more expensive brands that were made by foreign multinationals in the country, so that consumers would have more choices, said Roxas.
Arroyo gave the health department a deadline to expand village drugstores, which were established last year, to have 15,000 outlets nationwide by 2010.
"Medicines that were accessed through parallel importation must be delivered to the grassroots through the village drugstores," explained Arroyo.
The law has also allows local pharmaceutical firms to produce and register generic versions of drugs.
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