Ill-gotten health

Oh no—it seems that, because I am under medication for heart ailment, too much cholesterol and sugar in my blood, I am playing Russian roulette with my life when I go to the drugstores for my prescription medicines.

From what I gathered, various groups have been pestering our FDA, or Food and Drug Administration (under the Department of Health), to beef up its ability to stop those imported “fake” or “poor quality” medicines from entering the country—and thus my stomach.

No dice, brod, because from what I heard, the FDA for the longest time now is intently focused on one and only one thing. That is, running after neighborhood drugstores that sell medicines without prescriptions from real doctors, as against herbolario, for instance.

Under a new law, called the FDA Strengthening Act, the FDA also has the power to regulate imported drugs, for it to combat the worldwide menace known as “counterfeit” and “substandard” drugs.

Which is more important to the guys down here: the need for doctor’s prescription when you buy medicine or the quality of the same medicine for which you pay through your teeth?

The worldwide problem of fake and poor quality medicines recently took a rather personal twist because of the news that more than 100 persons died in Pakistan by taking medication for heart ailment, and a couple of hundreds more were gravely ill due to the same drugs. They were all given the deadly drugs in government hospitals for free. In other words, the victims were all poor. Those poor people were trying to stay alive by taking medication for heart ailment, and they died from it. And what a way to die!

Reports said the owners of the three drug companies in Pakistan were arrested.

Quietly, from what I heard, some groups already relayed warnings to the Aquino (Part II) administration to be aware of the dangers from imported drugs that hardly go through any sort of quality control.

It is said that we are seeing the record shipment of drugs from abroad nowadays, unregulated by the FDA. Our government does not have the means to check on the quality of the imported drug, particularly at the manufacturing sites in the “exporting” countries.

This means ordinary mortals like me can never tell whether or not the imported drugs were made in some backyards.

As a matter of fact, the World Health Organization for the past several years has been shouting the problem of counterfeit and substandard drugs in the world, affecting mostly poor countries.

At one time, the WHO estimated that counterfeit or substandard drugs account for more than 10 percent of the world supply of medicine. More than 25 percent of the medicines sold in poor countries were feared to be counterfeit or substandard.

Again, the operative word is “poor.” And we have many of them in this country—by the millions, in fact.

It was estimated that, in absolute amount, the fake drugs racket worldwide yields about $32 billion a year. It is big money, untold wealth to the manufacturers, at the expense of our health and even our lives.

We all know that money talks in many dealings with the government in any country.

According to the WHO, fake and poor quality drugs were prevalent in countries that had weak regulators. I am just not sure if our own FDA would fall under the WHO description of weak. It is just that complaints are mounting regarding its helplessness in monitoring the quality of imported drugs.

FDA hardly subjects them to quality tests, from what I heard, and so fearful of the lack of screening, some groups (the pharmaceutical industry and the medical profession) are raising their voices all the way to Malacañang.

The FDA, unlike their peers in other countries, does not even audit the drug companies in the exporting countries. Even African countries audit drug manufacturing plants in other countries when they buy from those, such as the cheap medication for AIDS.

And yet the new law—the FDA Strengthening Act—empowers the FDA even to ban products that can harm the public.

In an anniversary celebration of the FDA, our beloved Health Secretary Enrique Ona noted that the same complaints about the inability of our FDA to monitor the quality of imported drugs were also hurled against food and drug authorities in other countries.

I see. And so what do we do now?

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The group of taipan Andrew Tan, who is one of the five richest men in the Philippines, according to Forbes business magazine, is going into tourism full blast.

Andrew Tan is the founder of Megaworld, a real estate giant that about 10 years ago pioneered the BPO property business in the country through the Eastwood City in Libis, Quezon City, which now hosts some 40,000 BPO jobs.

By the way, there is talk in the stock market that the Ayala group is doing the same concept on a 20-hectare property in Valenzuela City.

There you have it—BPO and tourism, the very sectors said to be the future engines of economic growth in this country. The group of Andrew Tan is right in the middle of it all.

From what I gathered, the group is concentrating its resources on tourism infrastructure. Andrew Tan already signaled his leaning toward tourism with his group’s acquisition of land-rich but cash-poor Fil-Estate Land, which has huge pieces of property in Tagaytay, Batangas and Boracay.

For instance, Andrew Tan is starting this year a tourism complex project in Boracay, beside the Fairways and Blue Waters golf resort of Fil-Estate, which is said to have something for all sorts of tourists.

In the drawing board of the group are some 5,000 rooms in resorts and hotels all over the country. Infrastructure, in short!

Without the tourism infrastructure, we can talk to death about the beauty of nature and scenery in our country but it is all wasted saliva—i.e. sayang lang ang laway.