Cancer Burden in India: Evaluating the Cost burden of treatment due to TRIPS
Journal Title: National Journal of Research in Community Medicine - Year 2015, Vol 4, Issue 2
Abstract
Objectives: TRIPS (Agreement on Trade-related aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) is said to have an impact on drug pricing, thereby creating hurdles in the world-wide access to essential medicines. The objective of this paper is to estimate the effect of TRIPS on the cost burden of cancer treatment in India. Methods: Information was obtained through a web search on the world-wide best-selling cancer drugs. A cost comparison was done between the brand rates and the estimated discounted Indian government procurement rates. The estimated discounted government procurement rates were calculated using the average price variation (approx. 44%) between branded drugs and generic drugs on the National List of Essential Medicines. The overall percentage cost savings was estimated using the estimated 5-year prevalence of Cancer in India from the WHO GLOBOCAN 2012 Report. Results: In India, the five most common cancers were cancers of the breast (14.3%), cervix uteri (12.1%), lip-oral (7.6%), lung (6.9%) and colorectal (6.3%), breast cancer being on a constant rise over the years. The top best-selling cancer drugs globally in 2013 for the five most commonly occurring cancers are Bevacizumab ($6.75 billion), Trastuzumab ($6.56 billion), and Cetuximab ($1.87 billion). It was found that these drugs are not produced in India, their biosimilar are not available in India, and is not procured by the Indian government. If these drugs are procured by the Indian government then the estimated percentage savings of the people suffering from the most commonly occurring cancers in India is approximately 58%. Conclusion: Evidence does suggest that patenting presents a significant increase in costs of treatment and a tradeoff exits between current and future access of medicines and related aspects of trade and investments and thus there is a need to encourage the applicability of compulsory licensing and tiered pricing strategy
Authors and Affiliations
Ashwini Reddy, Chandrakiran Dubey, Suresh Munuswamy
Keywords
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