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

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.

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.

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.