PEOPLE who have the money to save themselves thru high-priced medicines won’t probably give a heck about it,but an average of four in five Filipinos live –and sometimes die — without access to medicines that could have cured them or at least prolonged their lives.

That is how the Philippine International Trading Corp. (PITC) paints the grim picture of exorbitant prices of mecdicines, a factor virtually contributing to mortality rates in the country.

Sad but true.

And yet, it can be reversed, or at least life can be made better for the sick and infirm among our less fortunate countrymen.

The key, if one listens to PITC Chairman Roberto Pagdanganan, is to loosen up on our intellectual property rights (IPR) laws so that the country thru the PITC can import similar but cheaper medicines from other Asian countries such as India or Pakistan without anymore raising the hackles — and courting suits besides — from multinational drug companies that use our IPR laws and international commitments to keep us from doing so.

The foreign drug companies like Pfizer insist that since they have the patent for a medicine distributed inthe Philippines like Norvasc, an anti-hypertension drug, government cannot import such drug or it will be violating the company’s intellectual property rights. Pfizer actually sued Pagdanganan recently at the Makati regional trial court for doing just that — buying 40 Norvasc tablet sfrom abroad which PITC would use to compare the local higher-priced version of the drug with.

Everyone — including our esteemed congressmen from Pangasinan led by House Speaker Jose C. de Venecia — mus supportefforts at changing this highly disadvantageous situation. Already, in the Senate, the so-called Roxas bill, Senate Bill No. 2283, seeking to practically remedy the situation, is already afoot. A strong lobby against it however is being put up by the foreign drug firms, quite expectedly, as it will direly affect their profit margins.

Write your congressmen and senators to say that they have your vote if they move for cheaper imported medicines. For once, a people’s initiative on this one must succeed.