Generic drugs make up 58% of public hospital supply

Costs and effects: The Health Ministry will ensure generic medicines are of high quality and meet standards. — AFP

MORE than half the supply of medicines obtained by the Health Ministry are generic, says Datuk Seri Dr Hilmi Yahaya.

The Deputy Health Minister said the Government wanted to use as many generic medicines as possible.

“At the moment, it amounts to 58% of all medicines dispensed at public hospitals and clinics, with the rest being innovator medicines or original drugs.

“But we will ensure that all these generic medicines are of high quality and meet the standards set by the ministry,” he said in replying to a question by G. Manivanan (PKR-Kapar) in Parliament yesterday.

Dr Hilmi stressed that the ministry would only buy medicines which have been tested.

“It is also the current procedure to issue medicines for only one month because a lot of wastage has been going on.

“So we encourage patients to collect medicines as and when needed,” he said.

Manivanan had asked about the amount of medicines returned by patients and steps taken by public hospitals and pharmacies to ensure these drugs could still be used.

To that, Dr Hilmi said the ministry had been running a programme to take back medicines from both public and private hospitals which were not used or had expired from patients to avoid damaging the environment.

“These returned medicines are reused for other patients in a safe and proper manner.

“Based on a three-month study from January this year on 40 hospitals which adopted this programme, it showed that we have saved RM106,394 worth of medicines,” he said.

On the cost of medicines, Dr Hilmi said those obtained by the ministry adhered to the guidelines set by the Finance Ministry while in the private sector, the prices were fixed through market rate and competition.

“We have taken some measures to help people get affordable medicines, among which includes monitoring market rates to determine any change in prices.

“There is also a database on the prices of various types of medicines, which serves as a guideline for patients to find out the estimated cost,” he said.

The database is available on the website of the pharmacy services division.