Do you regularly buy medicines? Do you prefer generics or branded?
I raised this question as I am a regular buyer of maintenance drugs for my mother. It’s almost a year now that I’ve been consistently supplying her need for medication, specifically for her hypertension problems. Every month, we spend around 3 to 4,000 pesos for her medicines. Her being a senior citizen card holder helped us a lot in her medicinal purchases as she’s entitled to 20% discount.
Her doctor, a heart expert, advised her not to take generic drugs as the formulation or dosage may not be the same with the branded ones and may risk her condition. This fact we actually experienced true when one time, we bought her a generic drug because of the unavailability of the prescribed ones and she experienced health problems afterwards. It took us days before her condition normalized again.
Let me clear on thing first, I am not against the generic drugs law as it helps poor to middle-class families afford medicines in the Philippines. Sad thing, medicines in our country are one of the most expensive in the world because of the “drug cartel” and commercialization. Pharmacies selling generic medicines like government-managed “Botika ng Barangays” (Barangay Drugstores) and commercial drugstores like “Generic Pharmacy” indeed helps the poor people afford medicines. I am too, from time to time, buy from these drugstores like medicines for flu, cough and cold. It’s too bad that poor people like us won’t be able to afford insurances provided by term life insurance quote online sites so we can really relax whenever we get sick and need medicines or even hospitalization.
My plea is simple: generics medicines should definitely be promoted but the government should ensure the quality of these medicines so the users won’t aggravate their health problems by taking these drugs. I salute Barangays in Marikina which put up their own Botikas (durgstores) and I hope that in the nexrt days, every Barangay in the city would have their own barangay generic drugstores too to make availability of cheap medicines more accesibile.
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#1 by Dinah on July 28th, 2009
I also had an experience re generic fever meds for my kids. I bought a generic paracetamol but hindi nawawala ang lagnat. when I had him take calpol, nawala agad. I am all for generic, pero how sure are we really na they are of the same quality? i dint want ot sacrifice my family’s health naman di ba?
#2 by zaldy on July 28th, 2009
You can ask for the Certificate of Product Registration, this is issued by BFAD to all the medicines that hs been found to conform woth the requirements and standards for registration of pharmaceutical products.