Letters | Hong Kong’s cancer patients should get drugs at the same low prices as in mainland China

Cancer treatment drugs are up to 80 per cent cheaper in mainland China. Life-saving drugs should be offered to Hong Kong patients at a similar price point, considering that the city is a part of the Greater Bay Area

Hong Kong healthcare and hospitals

Letters

Published: 7:00am, 13 Jan 2020

Why you can trust SCMP

Not too long ago, cancer patients from mainland China flocked to Hong Kong in search of new treatment drugs not yet available back at home. In those days, China’s registration process for new drugs was slow, meaning a long wait for new Western drugs to become available.

But, in the last two years, the reformed National Medical Products Administration has made new drugs more readily available and, most importantly, more affordable in mainland China than in Hong Kong.

For instance, the third-generation lung cancer drug, Osimertinib, is available in China at one-third of its selling price in Hong Kong (nearly HK$50,000 or US$6,430), and this is not an extreme example.

An injectable targeted therapy, Pertuzumab, for HER2-type breast cancer under the self-financed drug category in our Hong Kong public hospitals costs patient about HK$28,000, whereas the same drug will be available in Shenzhen soon at about 20 per cent of the Hong Kong price, and this is a drug to be used continuously for a very long time.

Drug makers slash prices in China to get on reimbursement list

Similarly, another lung cancer drug, Alectinib, will be 50 per cent cheaper, and ovarian cancer drug Olaparib will be 70 per cent cheaper in Shenzhen than in Hong Kong. This list goes on.

This is good news for our Hong Kong patients. Hong Kong citizens can enjoy these drugs at a lower price from China, and even better, if one becomes a Shenzhen citizen, one can enjoy the reimbursement of up to 90 per cent of the already lower cost of medication from the Shenzhen government.

In view of these advantages, it is foreseeable that there will be more Hong Kong cancer patients going to Shenzhen for treatment they may not be able to afford in Hong Kong.

Admittedly, patients in Hong Kong generally have more confidence in Hong Kong-trained doctors, but this will not stop them from going north to receive appropriate and sustainable treatment.

I urge pharmaceutical companies to consider that Hong Kong is part of the Greater Bay Area and benchmark their pricing so that Hongkongers are also able to enjoy the same benefits of lower-cost medication as our mainland Chinese counterparts.

Dr Victor Hsue, consultant oncologist, Hong Kong University-Shenzhen Hospital

Post