SENATE President Pro Tempore Ralph G. Recto is seeking a deeper inquiry into the Dengvaxia debacle amid reports that the Philippines was found to have the “highest incidence” of fake drugs in Southeast Asia.
Citing findings by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Recto on Monday prodded the Senate to mount a probe into the reported “presence and prevalence of counterfeit drugs in the Philippines.”
In filing a Senate resolution to pave the way for an inquiry in aid of crafting remedial legislation, Recto aired concerns that the Philippines was depicted as “a hot spot for knockoff drugs” in the UNODC 2019 report on “Transnational Organized Crime in Southeast Asia: Evolution, Growth and Impact.”
Taking the UN agency report to be “a cause for alarm and action,” the Senate President pro tempore noted its findings that from 2014 to 2017, “fake medicines, mostly from Pakistan, India and China reportedly entered the Philippines through an illicit trade network.”
Recto clarified that the Senate investigation’s aim “is to know the gravity of the problem and formulate remedial measures that will strengthen the capacity of the Food and Drug Administration and all law-enforcement agencies to defeat this problem.”
He also cited the reported market penetration of locally manufactured counterfeit over-the-counter medicines. This prompted the senator to ask the Duterte administration to take immediate steps to “unmask which of these misbranded, spurious, fake and falsely labeled drugs have entered the market and have duped Filipinos.”
Recto recalled that just last year, “no less than President Duterte described the availability of counterfeited paracetamol brands in the country as a growing threat and ordered the arrest of their makers and sellers.”
The senator added that if reports were true that fake medicines are sold for lower prices at sari-sari stores, “then they are victimizing the poor who often have to borrow money to buy medicines or [cut costs] by buying doses lower than what the doctor has prescribed.”
At the same time, he denounced the trade in fake medicines as “a large scale swindle of the cruelest kind, as their victims are of the illusion that they are taking authentic medicines that will cure them and not something made of flour.”
Moreover, he observed that not all drug dealers sell shabu (methamphetamine crystals).
Others sell fake medicines for infection, rabies, tuberculosis, cancer, cough and fever, the senator said in Tagalog.
According to Recto, the staggering amount of money Filipinos spend yearly for medicines and pharmaceutical preparations should prod the government to protect their health, safety and money, citing reports that in 2017, about P187 billion, or half of the P372.8 billion “out-of-pocket” health expenditure of Filipino families, went to pharmacies.
For instance, the senator cited that “households buy half a billion pesos worth of drugs a day.”
He added this excludes purchases by private hospitals, government and insurers that he estimates also run into billions of pesos.