The Ministry of Health took a bold step recently, one which offers a new lease of life to some 500,000 Malaysians who suffer from Hepatitis C.

I would like to congratulate the Health Minister Dr S Subramaniam for leveraging on the World Trade Organization’s Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement and national patent laws that allow governments to issue “government use” or “compulsory license” on various grounds.

These provisions allow a third party to produce the patented product or process without the consent of the patent owner. In this instance, the cost of treatment for each Hepatitis C patient using Sofosbuvir will be reduced as much as 99 percent from RM357,000 to just RM500.

Malaysia is no stranger to this. In 2003, the government issued a government use provision to enable the import of two combination HIV-Aids drugs from an Indian generic drug company. This resulted in the cost of the drugs falling, and an estimated three times more patients treated.

These actions clearly show that the government needs political will to make public health accessible and affordable to its people.

Therefore, we urge the Health Ministry to take one step further and make cancer medicines and treatments affordable as well by invoking the compulsory licence or government use provisions.

It is estimated that about 100,000 Malaysians live with cancer at any given time, and it is the third biggest killer in the country. According to the private sector, one in four Malaysians will have cancer by the age of 75.

But patients struggle with high cost of medication, loss of income, loss of lifetime savings, rising cost of living, budget cuts for healthcare, weak management of the healthcare system and other commitments such as mortgage, rent and school fees. A 2015 survey showed that nearly half of Malaysian cancer patients were financially impaired after one year of diagnosis.

According to the George Institute for Global Health, 49 percent of Australians use up their savings, 39 percent cannot afford to pay for their medication, and 19 percent discontinued treatments altogether.

These are the same concerns faced by Hepatitis C patients in Malaysia until now.

TRIPS provisions such as government use or compulsory licenses are rights accorded to nation-states that can be invoked when life-saving medicine prices are exorbitant and detrimental to the welfare of people and patients.

Also, it means that proactive governments can help to regulate prices of medicine in the interests of the people. Here people are prioritised over the profits of Big Pharma.

I would like to thank the various NGOs and others who have lobbied the government over the years to reduce the prices of Sofosbuvir.

And I look forward to the Health Ministry’s next announcement, which should ideally be about the huge reduction in costs of medicine and treatment procedures for cancer patients.