bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

helpersCheckIsPostiesArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

hooksAmpRedirectArticle

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

moreOnThisArticles

urlAlias

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

paywallTypes

corrections

sponsorType

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

socialHeadline

headline

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

publishedDate

additionalInfoBoxes

images

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

createdDate

sponsor

pdfFiles

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

Ella Lee

Patients needing long-term medication should pay for it, an expert says.

 The call follows a Hospital Authority study showing heart and blood pressure drugs alone eat up one-sixth of the authority's drugs budget.

 Cardiovascular disease medicine, most needing repeated use, cost the authority $205 million last year out of the total $1.31 billion drugs budget.

 An internal study estimated the cost of the newest class of drugs intended to lower lipids - mainly cholesterol - and thus help prevent heart attacks or strokes would jump from $25 million in 1994 to $70 million by 2000.

 The drug, called statin, has been described as a breakthrough in secondary prevention for patients who have a history of cardiovascular diseases, including ischaemic heart diseases and strokes.

 The drugs can cut the risk of a second heart attack or stroke by 20 to 30 per cent.

 Lipid-lowering drugs are now the top drugs expenditure items in public hospitals. About 30,000 patients at public hospitals take statin regularly.

 An authority study showed 60 per cent of 1,300 randomly selected hyperlipidemia patients treated at public hospitals' medical outpatient clinics had either a history of heart attacks or strokes, or risk factors including hypertension, smoking and high blood fat.

 The average age of the patients is 60.

 Dr Juliana Chan Chung-ngor, associate professor at Chinese University's department of medicine and therapeutics, said the rising cost of the drugs was only part of the problem.

 Dr Chan, the study's co-ordinator, said patients should pay for their drugs and a taskforce should be set up on the use of chronic drugs.

 'Patients who need statin are aged around 60 and they have a life expectancy well over 75, meaning they need to take the drugs for at least 15 years.

 'And for every two patients already on the drug, there is still another patient who has yet to be given it,' she said.

 Dr Chan said 10 per cent of the population had problems such as high blood fat, blood pressure and blood sugar.

 'There are many people in our community who may need the drugs.

 'Resources are so tight that we should set our priorities.'  Patients now pay $44 for both consultation and drugs no matter how many types of drugs they need.

 The cost of statin for each patient is estimated at around $5 to $8 a day.

 Although statin is proven a cost-effective preventive drug, Department of Health clinics do not provide it to patients.

 Benjamin Kwong Yiu-sum, president of the Pharmaceutical Society of Hong Kong, said the drug policy in the public health-care sector was a mess.

 He said the problem lay in whether the Government wanted to do more on the prevention of health problems.

 'The Hospital Authority and the Department of Health should be clear about their own role,' he said.



Heart and blood pressure medication cost Hospital Authority $205 million last