Medicines meant to improve mental health and address hypertension are the most expensive medications in the Philippines.
Based on the 2019 Medicine Price Index conducted by London-based digital health-care provider Medbelle, the Philippines ranked 17th out of 50 in terms of medicine costs with medications averaging 12.64 percent higher than the global median.
The country also had more expensive medicines compared to its Asean peers—Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand who ranked 47th, 48th and 50th in the index.
“We’ve seen firsthand how digitization can make high-quality medical care more accessible for everyone. While conducting research into the cities with the best hospital systems, we became aware that one of the biggest disparities across the world when it comes to access to care is the price of medicine,” Medbelle said.
Data showed medicine meant to address high blood pressure such as the branded Zestril and the pharmaceutical compound Lisinopril is 355.05 percent higher than the global median for the same medication.
This is followed by branded medicine Xanax and the pharmaceutical compound Alprazolam, which was 313.61 percent higher than the global average.
Other expensive medications include those for depression, bulimia, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), among others such as Prozac and the pharmaceutical compound Fluoxetine which was 293.97 percent higher than the median.
The cheapest medicine is for Hepatitis B, HIV/AIDS which is 86.41 percent lower than the global median. The brand name is Viread and the pharmaceutical compound is Tenofovir.
“The medications chosen for comparison span a variety of common conditions; from heart disease and asthma, to anxiety disorders and erectile dysfunction,” Medbelle said.
“The average prices of both the brand compound and their generic versions were included in order to have a complete profile of each medication. Lastly, we normalized the dosage size in order to make the price comparable,” it added.
The final index compares costs and deviations from the global median to reveal the differences in medication prices worldwide.
The results range from a 306.82 percent deviation in the United States, to a contraction of 93.93 percent in Thailand, highlighting a disparity in what patients pay for the same medicine across the world.
Overall, the United States has the most expensive medication in the world, costing 306.82 percent more than the global median, followed by Germany at 125.64 percent and the United Arab Emirates, 122.03 percent.
Thailand has the cheapest, costing 93.93 percent lower than the median price, followed by Kenya at 93.76 percent and Malaysia at 90.80 percent.
The medication with the highest price deviation from the global median is the blood pressure drug Lisinopril (brand name Zestril), which costs 2682.56 percent more in the US than the global median price.