A lawmaker has recently filed a measure allowing the government-owned Philippine International Trading Corp. (PITC) to import low-priced medicines.
House Bill 6114, authored by United Nationalist Alliance Rep. Gus Tambunting of Parañaque, seeks to provide the Filipino people a greater access to affordable medicines. The bill also seeks to amend Executive Order 442, designating the PITC as the lead agency to make quality medicines available, affordable and accessible to a greater number of Filipinos.
The measure allows the PITC to import low-priced medicines of the same quality or prescriptions from reputable and reliable suppliers and local sourcing of medicines using as basic component indigenous or endemic materials prevalent in the Philippines.
Tambunting, also vice-chairman of the House Committee on Trade and Industry, said that Filipinos especially those in the rural areas could not afford medicines due to poverty.
“Patients die not because of absence of medicines but because they cannot afford to buy medicines sitting idly in the cabinets of drugstores,” Tambunting said.