Cancer treatments: we must serve patients, not private interests

Dr Françoise Sivignon, President of Doctors of the World, France.   The number of new cases of cancer continues to rise, reaching 3.7 million a year in Europe. Behind this increase lies another equally worrying trend: the rising costs of new treatments. It is no longer unusual to see cancer treatments costing between €50,000 and €90,000 per patient, per year. Worse still, prices reached new heights a few months ago, with the introduction of CAR-T therapies, billed at between €300,000 and €350,000 per patient.   Given this situation, healthcare systems are finding it increasingly difficult to ensure everyone has access to the best possible drugs. The exorbitant sums charged for cancer drugs approved by States today will constitute barriers to accessing healthcare tomorrow.   In other words, at these price levels, healthcare systems will no longer be able to pay for every patient, forcing some to be excluded from treatment.   Abuse of the patent system   These exorbitant prices are made possible by a patent system that ensures industrial pharmaceutical companies can retain their twenty-year-old monopolies. Thus, it guarantees that there will be no competition from generic and biosimilar drugs. For sixty years, drug patents in Europe have been organised as a means of promoting research and development. This system has deviated significantly from its original principle and is now subject to abuse. The fact is that the major pharmaceutical firms i...
Source: Doctors of the World News - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Tags: Uncategorised Source Type: news