CAIRO: Egypt received a grant of over half a million dollars from the US that will fund a study on how to decrease the price of pharmaceuticals and increase their availability in the local market. US Ambassador to Egypt Margaret Scobey and Kamal Sabra, assistant minister of health for pharmaceutical affairs, recently signed a cooperative agreement for the $557,704 grant. Egypt's healthcare sector is expecting growth rates of 10 percent annually for the next five years. The grant, signed by Scobey on behalf of the US Trade Development Agency (USTDA), will fund a feasibility study on how to enhance Egypt's pharmaceuticals supply chain to meet growing needs. According to a statement by the US Department of State, the study focuses on possibilities for data collection, inventory management and process standardization, and is “an integral part of the ministry's health reform effort to provide cost-effective and improved services to the public.” Expanding the capabilities of the current supply chain will lead to lower costs and a greater variety of pharmaceuticals available to patients, the statement read. The project will fund two pilot projects in two governorates to test key findings of the study. “The United States and Egypt have had a long history of cooperation in the healthcare sector, including implementing programs to improve health coverage of underserved populations and strengthening the technical and managerial capacity of the health sector to positively impact the well-being of the Egyptian population,” Scobey said at the signing ceremony. “Today's USTDA grant is yet another opportunity for Egypt and the US to work together, this time addressing the supply and distribution of pharmaceutical products in Egypt,” she added. Dina Iskander, a researcher for the Rights to Health program at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, said, “This is a very important grant because there haven't been many studies discussing affordability of pharmaceuticals in Egypt.” Iskander explained that most studies conducted by pharmaceutical companies in Egypt were geared more towards market research, forecasting and business interest rather than conducting the research with the public interest in mind. She also said that most studies conducted were on smaller scales, adding that the amount allocated for this fund is necessary for a more valuable study. “A problem, for example, with a recent World Health Organization study conducted in collaboration with the Ministry of Health, was that the scope of the study was limited to Cairo and relied mainly on office research. The study required a larger scope to be of significance,” said Iskander. “One study which was conducted recently showed the pharmaceutical prices here are lower than other countries, but still relatively high and unaffordable compared to the wages of Egyptian citizens,” Iskander added. There are also problems with the quality of products and research and development (R&D) by Egyptian firms producing generic products. Remon Hakim, manager of a pharmacy in Shoubra, lauded the grant and said it will be crucial for studying and addressing problems in the Egyptian pharmaceutical markets. He added that while the Ministry of Health was doing a good job of decreasing prices of many pharmaceutical products, “it is hard to know which medicines' prices are decreasing or increasing.” “We need to keep in mind that 68 percent of all expenditure on pharmaceuticals in Egypt is out-of-pocket consumption that is not covered by insurance or the state.”
