NO doubt the biggest health news in the country this year is the signing into law of the Cheaper Medicines Act. In a country like ours where majority find it difficult to comply with their doctors? prescriptions faithfully, the law offers a rainbow of hope for the average Filipino afflicted with chronic medical problems requiring lifelong treatment.

Many are hoping that the average family?s budget to regularly purchase maintenance medicines for their members with chronic medical conditions like asthma, heart diseases, arthritis and ulcers, does not have to compete with budget allocated for basic necessities like food and shelter. This law is supposed to be the answer for this need.

This coming year will put the law?s implementing rules and regulations drafted by the Department of Health to a test to see if this law could really deliver what it?s expected to, and not suffer the fate of many laws which are good on paper but fail to deliver concrete results.

Willing to cooperate

It?s good to note that many managers of multinational pharmaceutical companies I have talked to the past few months are willing to cooperate with the government to make implementation of this law successful. In fact, some companies have literally cut the prices of their medicines by as much as half through discount coupons and patient membership cards. They also offer free laboratory examinations needed to diagnose or monitor the patient?s progress.

This is a shining moment for these drug companies who prove that their concern for patient welfare still weighs heavily and are not relegated far behind their business interests.

Health Secretary Francisco Duque III has time and again stressed that the law will trigger the acceleration of government efforts to put up more government pharmacies selling cheap medicines to the poor, who will certainly be the biggest beneficiary of this law.

The government?s Botika ng Bayan program is expected to get much-needed support through this law and boost its standing as a respectable source of effective but reasonably priced medicines. It is projected that there will be 15,000 BNBs nationwide by 2010, a rather ambitious but doable goal. But even just half of this network should already be sufficient to provide easy access of affordable medicines for the poor in the remote barangays.

Sometime ago, Secretary Duque said in one of his speeches that the cost of medicines in the country has been consistently and continuously prohibitive, so much so that the poor has limited access to essential drugs bringing a perpetual cycle of impoverishment, crippling diseases and untimely deaths. If he?s able to use this law as a tool to break this vicious perpetual cycle, this will be a legacy for which the nation will owe him and all those who made this law a reality a debt of gratitude.

Big step

Having more affordable medicines is a big step to improve the healthcare status in the country. But, as the old saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure. If we can optimize measures for prevention of common medical problems, we?ll have much less need for medicines.

For cardiovascular diseases, which is still the leading cause of deaths in the country, if we can only convince more people to quit smoking and prevent teeners and young adults from ever smoking their first cigarette, we can go a long way in curbing down the incidence of heart attacks, strokes, peripheral arterial diseases leading to leg amputation and other serious cardiovascular complications.

There are times when the government seems to look the other direction when addressing this problem of increased number of smokers in the country. When a government shows ambivalence in its attitude in looking at health vis-à-vis economic issues, no law including the Cheaper Medicine Law can really uplift the nation?s healthcare.

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We wish all our readers a bountiful and healthful new year.