The sales of 248 medicines were stopped because of low profitability between 2010 and this month.
During the seven-and-a-half year period, the supply of 583 drugs was cut off and 248 of them, or 46.09 percent, were taken off the market for the reason of low profitability, according to Rep. Kwon Mi-hyuk권미혁 of the ruling Democratic Party who checked it with the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety.
The problem is some rare disease treatments are included among the drugs whose supply has stopped.
For example, the sales of K-Contin taken by patients with a rare disease of paralyzed muscles due to lack of potassium were suspended three times – in 2009, 2014 and 2016 – as it was not, inflicting much pain on patients.
To prevent the stoppage of drug supply, the government is implementing a system that bans the exits of some drugs from the market, but to little avail.
The policy is not very effective, either, because the government has few means of sanctioning those drugmakers which stop producing medicines on its anti-exit list.
“Because of these problems, the ministry has attempted to provide essential drugs on a consignment basis by securing 600 million won ($535,000) in the budget last year but pharmaceutical companies jibbed at undertaking the job citing low profitability,” Rep Kwon said. “The ministry spent only 290 million won on producing tuberculosis therapy and cast the other 310 million won as unused budget.”
The government needs to positively consider establishing a public pharmaceutical company to cope with the crisis of public health more effectively, such as the outbreak of new infectious diseases, and to ensure the stable supply of essential medical products, he added.
Rep. Kwon also sponsored a bill on the “supply and management of nation’s essential medical products” in June.
The bill called for, among others, establishing a national committee to manage essential medical products as the control tower to deal with the crisis of public health, and supplying these drugs swiftly through a public drugmaker.
“As problems have continued to occur under the current medicine production system exclusively handled by the private sector, there are strong needs to set up a public pharmaceutical company,” Kwon said. “One reasonable alternative would be to supplement the existing public infrastructure that had been run inefficiently and operate it more efficiently, without building new production facilities.”