Slow Medicine market hits Novartis

Country president and managing director Sirilak Suteekul yesterday said Thai consumers had cut down on unnecessary expenses, due to lower purchasing power.

The Thai pharmaceuticals market grew less than 15 per cent in the first half of the year, and although the company's local sales were above the market average, they were still below its recent average annual growth rate of 20 per cent.

Sirilak said sales of over-the-counter (OTC) drugs had shown a significantly drop, against rising sales of prescription drugs by general hospitals.

"Some consumers have decided not to buy unnecessary medicines, such as painkillers from drug stores, to save money," she said. "I believe total pharmaceutical sales this year will grow only 12 per cent, while those of Novartis will increase more than 15 per cent but less than 20 per cent."

Seventy per cent of the company's local sales come from human medicine, 15 per cent from veterinary drugs and the rest from OTC and generic drugs.

Sirilak said the company had imported a few new medicines this year, including Ranibizumab to treat age-related degeneration of eyesight, a patch medicine for Alzheimer's disease and a new drug for osteoporosis, a degenerative bone disease.

Meanwhile, Swiss-based Novartis has announced another phase in its cooperation with the National Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (Biotec) to extend drug research and development in Thailand. The two organisations have been working together since 2005.

Novartis director Alexandre Jetzer said his company had spent in the "two-digit million US dollars" in the first phase of drug research in Thailand and planned to allocate a similar amount for the second phase.

He said Novartis and Biotec had discovered 2,000 micro-organisms and that many of them had a proven  ability to produce new compounds.

"We have to continue researching these microbial strains. We may have to spend more than 10 years on research and development, but finally we hope to produce a few medicines," he said.