About half of women diagnosed with the disease die each year with expensive costs blamed for lack f treatment
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Breast cancer patients have gotten some relief after the World Health Organization approved the use of a low-cost drug to treat the disease.
Cancer treatment is very expensive and WHO said affordable medicine will cushion patients from poor families against prohibitive costs.
WHO said Trastuzumab, the breast cancer drug, has proven to be life-saving.
A single dose of Trastuzumab, also known as Herceptin in Kenya, goes for more than Sh150,000. WHO said the drug is vital for aggressive breast cancer.
The biosimilar version of the drug is expected to push the price downward by 65 per cent.
Trastuzumab was included in the WHO Essential Medicines List in 2015 as an essential treatment for about 20 per cent of strands of breast cancer.
With time, it has shown high efficacy in curing early stage breast cancer and in some cases more advanced forms of the disease, WHO said.
The WHO on Wednesday gave its quality seal of approval to a biologically similar formulation of the breast cancer drug.
On June 25 last year, the Kenya Network of Cancer Organisation wrote to the ministry expressing concern at the unavailability of the drug.
Statistics from the 2018 GLOBOCAN report by the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer shows the disease is the leading type of cancer diagnosed in Kenya.
Out of the approximately 6,000 (5,985) women diagnosed with breast cancer each year, about half (2,553) die.
WHO says the approval of the use of Trastuzumab for treatment will reduce the deaths. Breast cancer remains the most common form of cancer in women according to the UN agency.
More than 2.1 million women were diagnosed with the disease in 2018.
More than 630,000 of them died, many because of late diagnosis and lack of access to affordable treatment.
“WHO prequalification of biosimilar trastuzumab is good news for women everywhere,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
The drug is produced by Dutch-based firm Samsung Bioepis and is the first trastuzumab product to be assessed by WHO and found comparable to the originator product in terms of efficacy, safety and quality, the global health agency said.
Prequalification means WHO has assessed the medicine and it meets international standards, making it eligible for procurement by national health authorities.
“Women in many cultures suffer from gender disparity when it comes to accessing health services. In poor countries, there is the added burden of a lack of access to treatment for many, and the high cost of medicines. Effective, affordable breast cancer treatment should be a right for all women, not the privilege of a few.”
Even though a few biosimilars of the drug have come to market in the last five years, none had been prequalified by WHO.
“We need to act now and try to avoid more preventable deaths,” WHO assistant director-general for Medicines and Health Products Mariângela Simão said.
“The availability of biosimilars has decreased prices, making even innovative treatments more affordable and hopefully available to more people.”
A recent WHO study of breast cancer in sub-Saharan Africa found that of 1,325 women surveyed in three countries, cancer treatment had not been initiated within one year of diagnosis for 227 (17 per cent) and for 185 (14 per cent) women with stage I-III disease.
Self-reported treatment barriers confirmed costs as a major contributor to not receiving medication.
WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer estimates that by 2040, the number of diagnosed breast cancer cases will reach 3.1 million, with the greatest increase in low- and middle-income countries.
WHO prequalification is a seal of good quality that makes a drug company’s product eligible for bulk procurement by United Nations agencies.
But in the case of drugs for cancer and other non-communicable diseases, there are almost no UN-based donor programmes for procurement and supply to low-income countries.
In July 2018, WHO launched a pilot project expanding the scope of prequalification to two biotherapeutic medicines, including rituximab used to treat certain leukemias and lymphomas, along with trastuzumab, as a step towards making some of the most expensive treatments for cancer more widely available in low- and middle-income countries.
Biotherapeutic medicines, which are produced from biological sources such as cells rather than synthesized chemicals, are important treatments for some cancers and other non-communicable diseases.
Like generic medicines, biosimilars can be much less expensive versions of innovator biotherapeutics while keeping the same effectiveness.
edited by p.o