Big pharma should put life first in cancer fight
By Editorial.Team, June 9, 2022There’s excitement in medical circles after a new drug, Dostarlimab, showed potential as a possible cure for patients with colorectal cancer during clinical stages.
That is big news in the fight against the disease that kills more than 28,000 Kenyans a year. Stories of families selling all they have to tend to their loved ones who are battling cancer are myriad, highlighting the non-financial cost that families have to bear as they deal with the disease.
Heart-wrenching tales of caregivers who give up on their patients because they cannot afford decent care are too common across all 47 counties in the country. The news therefore that there is a drug that might bring this despair, pain and high cost of care down is indeed welcome news.
However, there is a catch. The drug does not come cheap. A dose of Dostarlimab will cost a patient up to Sh1.2 million. In our estimation, just one dose of a potentially life-saving drug should not cost that much because many of those who need it cannot afford it unless they sell property or raise money in other ways.
Traditionally, pharmaceutical giants have thrived on such discoveries to make huge profits oblivious of the pain their pricing causes to patients the world over. However, it is possible for them to temper the quest for profit with the need to make the drug more widely available so that they can achieve social good while also profiting from their investments in research and development. In short, one can go with the other.
In the past, business leaders like Mark Cuban, who runs an online pharmacy that takes on the Big Pharma by reducing the cost of drugs for diseases such as Leukemia does this to show the world that profits ought not to always come second to saving lives. A balanced mix of both would be ideal.
As Kenya awaits further tests on the cancer drug, we call upon Big Pharma to stand with humanity and provide the drug, when it will be available, at a cost that is affordable and to make it available to those who need it around the world.
They can borrow from the example set by the Covax programme. Had it not been for the Covax programme by the World Health Organisation, many countries in Africa would not have received a dose of the all-important Covid-19 vaccine. Wealthy nations also chipped in by making donations to less endowed ones. The world can do this again with the cancer drug.
We request the manufacturers, and governments across the world, to stand with those who need the drug and offer it at a fair price to ensure a win-win for both manufacturers and patients.