20000205

'Expensive healthcare facilities need to be rationalised'

KARACHI: Unless there are significant changes in financing of access to hospitals and medicines, Pakistan's health system will be confronted with an intolerable burden from heart disease, diabetes and depression.

As such it will become more difficult to combat the current challenges from tuberculosis (TB) and other prevalent infectious diseases, said Paul Gross while speaking at symposium here on Friday.

The symposium was held on "The Role of Research-based Pharmaceutical Companies in Healthcare in Pakistan".

Paul Gross, who is the Director of Institute of Health Economics and Technology Assessment in Sydney, is also the author of a 1988 report on Pakistan's health system.

Paul indicated that tax incentives were needed to encourage university-industry linkages to evaluate modern medicines and their impact in reducing hospitalisation.

Besides, international experiences in commercialisation of new technology should be studied by government planners.

"The new disease burden is coming in heart disease, diabetes and mental disorder. Pakistan's medical experts have in the past three years warned of the lack of diagnosis of raised blood pressure, diabetes and depression. Those risk factors are predecessors to every expensive admissions to hospitals and the use of specialist care," he said.

Other nations are now into disease management strategies which put the emphasis on prevention of the risk factors to those diseases. Those strategies try to educate the public, use modern drug therapy, and involve the medical profession in the development of clinical practice guidelines which ensure value for money in healthcare, he said.

Paul Gross said Pakistan needed to identify high priority target diseases for special attack. He applauded Pakistan's Expanded Programme of Immunisation in his 1988 report.

He said it was a classic example of a vertical health programme that was driven by a committed leader in medicine. He pointed out that the vaccines used came from research-based pharmaceutical companies, and that without patent protection, this R&D would dry up.

Pakistan needed a new partnership with the industry to encourage clinical trials in Pakistan. "Modern drugs have been shown to reduce the need for expensive hospitalisation, and the government needs to see that higher budgets for medicines can reduce hospital budgets.

"For every 10 percent increase in drug budgets, economists are showing a six percent reduction in hospitals costs," he said. APP