The prices of maintenance medicines for non-communicable diseases are affected by inflation and peso devaluation as these are also commodities in the market, a health department official said Wednesday.
“Based on our monitoring in December 2022, we have seen a slight price increase in a set of medicines, these hypertensive medicines, which was because of the inflation and the peso devaluation,” Department of Health officer-in-charge Maria Rosario Vergeire said in a press briefing in Pasay City.
Vergeire did not cite the brand names of the medicines.
The DOH, through the Cheaper Medicines Act or Republic Act 9502, monitors the prices of medicines to ensure quality medicines are available to the public.
“Overall, we have stable prices of our medicines and this is because of Executive Order 155, wherein we placed price caps starting March 23, 2022 for hypertension, for diabetes, high cholesterol, asthma, and for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, colorectal, lung and breast cancers, must be in our capping, regulating their prices in order to be more accessible to our fellowmen,” she said.
The price caps for these medicines are still in effect and can still be regulated, she added.
“We also have the the medium drug retail price, where the prices of medicines are reduced, these molecules, to make them more accessible to the public),” she said. – PNA
April 24, 2024
