KUALA LUMPUR, May 29 (Bernama) — The Ministry of Health Malaysia (MOH) welcomes a successful resolution laid out on ‘Improving the Transparency of Markets for Medicines, Vaccines, and Other Health Products’ at the World Health Organization 72nd World Health Assembly (WHA) held on 20th to 28th May 2019, Geneva. This was after intense negotiations with Member States to agree with the draft resolution proposed by Italy. Malaysia is one of the initial six (6) co-sponsors (Greece, Italy, Malaysia, Serbia, Spain and Uganda) to the resolution that gradually gained support from nineteen (19) countries (Andorra, Brazil, Egypt, Eswatini, Greece, India, Italy, Kenya, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Portugal, Russian Federation, Serbia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka and Uganda).
Access to medicines and vaccines is a concern shared by all regions. Malaysia strongly supports the initiative to encourage more transparency and improved policies and actions to ensure fairer pricing and reduction of out-of-pocket payments. The Ministry believes that a sustainable fairer pricing system is needed for both health systems and pharmaceutical industries. This landmark agreement is a first step towards a more open dialogue about price transparency to improve access to medicines.
