In recent times, Paraguayan citizens have been facing a challenge in access to medicine. In August 2023, Global Peace Women (GPW) Paraguay held a webinar moderated by their national director, Maria Ester Jimenez, in which she hosted Dr. Gloria Meza to talk about the factors determining access to medicine in the country. Dr. Meza, an expert on the subject matter, is the vice president of the Latin Ibero-American Confederation of Medical Entities.
Sharing statistics on the subject, Dr. Meza said that the pharmaceutical industry is one of the industries with the highest turnover at the world level, with a turnover of 634 billion euros per year, making it the second largest turnover after drugs and illicit drugs and substances trafficking. Dr. Meza explained that pharmaceutical entities have created many situations that work against the best interest of people through advertising their products.
“For example, they talk about high cholesterol as a disease. In reality, elevated cholesterol is an alteration of the amount of cholesterol in the blood, which can impact other diseases. Therefore, elevated cholesterol is not a disease,” she said.
She added that such advertisements drive unnecessary demand for the products, making them expensive.
She also mentioned drug etiology as another cause of many deaths. This has been due to how many types of medicine are sold over the counter, including those containing calcium, collagen, poly-vitamins, and more uncontrolled substances. She added sometimes those products are not beneficial to a person’s health and well-being and cautioned the participants against taking medicine without a proper prescription by a medical professional.
Moreover, Dr. Meza noted that many people consume medicines without infectious or functional problems because pharmaceutical companies have created consumers through their advertisements.
“This is driven by their desire to improve their income,” she said, adding that this contributed to higher mortality levels among the people.
Additionally, she shared about the high cost of treating diseases such as those that affect the circulatory system, cerebrovascular and coronary accidents, anemia, cancer, and other infectious and parasitic diseases.
“People who do not have any insurance have to cover the cost of their medicines, and this makes that inaccessible to some,” she added.
Dr. Meza expressed the need for the health governing body in Paraguay, the Ministry of Public Health and Social Welfare, to control and have a laboratory to test the efficacy and efficiency of drugs. She noted that there are times that medications go through the registration and market entry process solely based on the information on the scientific work done by the manufacturers without being tested and reviewed for deficiencies. She proposed that the government laboratory should put more effort into verifying drug components, doses, absorption, and efficacy before they go out to consumers.
She also proposed adopting economic regulations to guarantee competitiveness in the market, ensure accessible prices to individual consumers, contain public drug spending institutional channels, and guarantee the effectiveness of drug spending. This, she deemed, would help prevent consumers from buying drugs with little or no effectiveness. She also recommended using generic drugs, copies of the original medicines with the same efficacy but are more cost-effective.
GPW hopes that by providing a platform for experts to share their insights in the field of health, everyday people will be more informed and capable of making the best decisions for themselves and their families. Our education and service activities in the area of strengthening families work to establish healthy and resilient families that form the cornerstone of peace in the home and society.