Do patient access programmes undertaken by major pharmaceutical companies, meet the needs of patients they are meant for?
A new report from Amsterdam-based Access to Medicine Foundation (ATMF) has found that large drugmakers are making ambitious commitments, but more needs to be done in getting products to those who need them.
With Covid and Mpox, for example, it’s been seen that a product available in one region is not available in another, said Jayasree K. Iyer, Chief Executive with ATMF, adding that a lot more needs to be done in getting products to regions that bear the disease burden.
Patient assistance programmes, for instance, need to be better embedded in business operations to get more products across to more countries or all products across to all countries, Iyer told businessline. There is a mismatch between the commitments of companies and the regions where there is the disease burden, she added.
Calling for more “precise and actionable” goals for greater impact, the report said, “Despite comprising 80 percent of the global population, people in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) still face significant challenges in accessing essential healthcare products.
As demand for these products grows in underserved regions, the limited availability—often due to production by only a few companies or single suppliers—becomes more pressing.”
The companies examined by the non-profit Foundation included Astellas, Eli Lilly, BMS, Roche, Pfizer, GSK, Bayer, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Takeda, J&J, Sanofi, Merck, Gilead, Eisai, Boehringer Ingelheim, AstraZeneca, MSD, Daiichi Sakyo and AbbVie.
While the large drugmakers sell in India as well, Iyer pointed to examples of tuberculosis (TB) drugs and diabetes products.
The first illustrated a scenario where access to drugs was facilitated by partners including Government and donors putting resources behind it, and getting companies to deliver.
But with diabetes and cancer, she said, oligopolies are resulting in huge gaps in access to treatments. And with non-communicable diseases being a public health issue, better plans need to be in place to get these products to people, rather than depend on donors, she said.
The report said, “19 of the 20 companies assessed have reported using approaches to track the patients they reach with their essential medicines in LMICs (low and middle income countries)... However, there is no consensus on how to calculate the number of patients reached, resulting in widely varying approaches across companies.”
“Overall, the data demonstrates that across the 19 reporting companies, there are both product and geographic gaps in measuring patient reach, leaving the number of patients reached in some areas and for some diseases unknown.”