Press Statement by DAP National Vice Chairman and MP for Tanjong Chow Kon Yeow on Tuesday, 3 April 2007
High price of drugs in Malaysia excludes the poor, DAP calls for government action to make drugs and medicine available and affordable for all

The DAP views with concern the finding of a recent research report published in PLos Medicine that drugs essential to basic health care have been priced out of the reach of Malaysia’s poor.
An international team of researchers looked at the cost of 48 key drugs in private and government-run pharmacies and dispensing doctor’s surgeries in four regions of Semananjung Malaysia.
Twenty-eight of these drugs are on a core list of ‘essential’ drugs published by the World Health Organization, based on disease burden. The remaining 20 are important for health care needs specific to Malaysia.
Prices of patented and generic drugs were compared and average local wages assessed to calculate the affordability of drugs.
They found that the prices of both patented and generic drugs were on average 16 times higher than international reference prices, and that some dispensing doctors are selling generic drugs at 310 times their real cost.
Buying a month’s supply of a commonly prescribed stomach ulcer pill in Malaysia would cost a low-paid government worker the equivalent of three days’ wages, for example.
Malaysia allows market forces to determine drugs prices, and the study questions the government’s failure to cushion the poorest of its people.
Malaysia, wooed by United States, has entered into bilateral free trade agreements on drugs, which have been criticised for disabling the country’s rights to procure cheaper drugs.
The DAP therefore calls on the government to consider more effective price-control policies to be put in place, and increased or better-targeted public spending on essential medicines.