Only in 2022, the Essential Medicines and Central Logistics Support Program (Promese/Cal) served Dominicans almost five billion pesos in medicines and health supplies through the National Public Health Service and the Red de Farmacias del Pueblo in 2022.
This has allowed people with fewer resources access to essential medicines and supplies at a very low cost, which undoubtedly solves one of the most important issues in the nation and is carried out in compliance with the provisions of regulations such as the Law General of Health.
Said evident government success in this matter could be accompanied by measures not yet explored, to make it even more comprehensive. For example, there are numerous companies in the Dominican Republic with manufacturing and supply capacity for the entire local market of almost any type of medicine.
However, some essential pharmaceutical products for the population, although the local industry is fully capable of manufacturing them, cannot do so within the framework of the law because the companies that sell them exclusively are holders of invention patents that in practice in our country they confer all the advantages of a monopoly and therefore sell them extremely expensive.
The National Office of Industrial Property (Onapi) has at its disposal mechanisms such as compulsory licenses to authorize other companies (such as Dominican laboratories), in very special circumstances established in the industrial property law, to sell the same medicines at significantly lower prices. . However, although the law establishes specific deadlines and there are many requests that the institution has received since the year 2000, they are simply put away and one has never been issued.
In this sense, one way for the public sector to show that the health revolution is a priority would be to implement a license issuance plan in cases of public interest or even a national emergency. An example of a case of this type is undoubtedly the current need to make available to the entire population, at lower prices, the drugs required to treat arterial hypertension that is affecting so many people.
This issue is extremely delicate because it involves the fundamental Right to Health. For this reason, hopefully the suggestion will be taken into account so that the plans that are executed are even more effective and attractive.
