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Published on September 24, 2007

A Public Health Ministry panel is set to recommend four cancer medicines for voluntary licensing, which means patent holders will have to accept negotiations for a lower medicine price or face compulsory licensing.

The four medicines are Imanitib, Docetaxel, Erlotinib and Letrozole.

"We will ask the Public Health Ministry to start negotiating with patent holders of these medicines to see whether they can lower their prices," National Health Security Office secretary general Dr Sa-nguan Nitayarumphong said yesterday.

He chairs the subcommittee tasked with identifying medicines and medical supplies that have access problems under the national health security scheme.

Sa-nguan said the four medicines were carefully selected from a pile of drugs for various diseases including ulcers, hypertension and diabetes.

Imanitib is used to treat leukaemia and gastrointestinal stromal tumours. Docetaxel is used to treat lung cancer and breast cancer. Erlotinib is used to treat lung cancer, and Letrozole is used to treat breast cancer.

"The original Letrozole drug is Bt230 per dose while a generic version is just Bt6 per dosage," Sa-nguan said.

He said the subcommittee identified the four medicines for voluntary licensing because they were life-saving medicines that, due to high prices, were not widely accessible to patients.

"Cancers are the number-one killer disease in the country. Of all cancers, breast cancer and lung cancer are very common," he said, adding Imanitib was highly efficient in prolonging a patient's life and was the only choice for leukaemia and gastrointestinal stromal tumours in the market.

"So, we have come up with these four medicines," he said.

Sa-nguan said after the subcommittee made the recommendations to the Public Health Ministry, another subcommittee tasked with the negotiations would take action.

"Compulsory licensing will be used only as the last resort," he said.

Last year, the universal healthcare scheme shouldered Bt1.27 billion in treatment costs for cancer patients, up from Bt953 million in 2005.