Representatives of the Bahamas Pharmaceutical Association [BPA] met with government officials concerning the government’s new price control initiative. Member companies of the Association closed their doors on Novembers 1st in response to the new price control rules.
After the meeting Minister of Health and Wellness, the Hon. Michael Darville spoke with ZNS news of the outcome. “Some of the highlights that I think is very important for us is the fact that we were able to add additional drugs. You know cancer is one of those things that is very high in the country and so we added cancer drugs and then of course we have a lot of dialysis patients and we have a lot of cases of renal insufficiency and we add those drugs. On the backdrop of that, we were able to incorporate the World Health Organization pharmacopoeia which is very important to us. And so the discussion proved to be very beneficial to the government and bring cost savings from a wide cross section of drugs for the Bahamian people.”
For her part, Shantia McBride, President of the [BPA] said, “at this current time we came up with an agreement that both sides can survive off. Government will be able to provide economic relief for patients that were not originally in the category. So for us were now able to help, I would say, about 60% of our patients now get this relief, that is what we originally wanted. We wanted to come to the table to together come up with a way for our customers and our patients to get this relief.”
The price control amendment is scheduled to last for three months.
