THE 72nd World Health Assembly (WHA) on Tuesday adopted a resolution that will make the pricing of medicines more transparent. KEI says the biggest achievement is the agreement that member states should, “Take appropriate measures to publicly share information on net prices”. Pointing out that the resolution asks member states to publicly share information on net prices of health products, Dr Ramli says, “This is a good start for better transparency of drug prices in future. In the current practice when calling for a tender, the ministry will compare prices with median prices of medicine in countries with a similar development status, says Lim. “This can deter some companies from abusing their patent monopoly position to set unreasonably high benchmark/reference prices in different markets,” he says.

Source: The Star June 02, 2019 00:00 UTC