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By Sherryle Anne G. Quito, Senior Reporter
Editor’s note: Part one profiled Generic
Botika Inc., Pascual Laboratories Inc. and started to describe Phil
Pharmawealth Inc., a 100-percent Filipino-owned company.
Last of two parts
Phil Pharmawealth Inc.
The company was established in 1993 by Iloilo
Rep. Ferjenel Biron, a physician who has recently been the subject
of controversy for his proposed amendments to the Cheaper Medicines
Bill.
Operating on the theme “Opening the gateway to
Competitive and Quality Injectables,” Phil Pharmawealth “seeks
to build on the inexorbable march toward globalization and the
concomitant dismantling of trade barriers to achieve the pre-eminent
position in pharmaceutical manufacturing in the Philippines.”
Its officials claim that Phil Pharmawealth’s
pivotal role in the delivery of quality affordable medicines to the
Filipino poor is the recent thrust of the government to actively
bring down the price of drugs to a level affordable to the ordinary
Filipino.
Medgen Laboratories
Inc. is a 100-percent Filipino-owned company licensed by the Bureau
of Food And Drugs to operate as a drug manufacturer and is allowed
to distribute its own pharmaceutical products. The company produces
pharmaceutical preparations in the form of capsules, tablets,
sterile solution, suspensions and syrups. Its president, Dr. Gil
Divinagracia, wants Medgen to use only high quality raw materials
from world-class manufacturers. These are sourced through
importation and local purchase from reputable trading firms.
The company has three subsidiaries, MG Prime
Pharmaceuticals Inc., Eyecare Products Inc. and Atlantic
Pharmaceuticals Inc. The company has expanded its distribution
network through carefully chosen distributors to make affordable and
quality generic drugs available to all Filipinos.
United Laboratories Inc. Unilab, one of the
country’s flagship companies, helped rehabilitate and transform
the country’s postwar economy. It has been consistently ranked
among the top 50 corporations in the Philippines.
Unilab now has at least 20 percent market share,
the highest in the country. But the medicine business is still
dominated by some of the world’s biggest multinationals when their
market shares are lumped together.
Some Unilab consumer brands are established
market leaders in the Philippines and are even exported. Founded in
1945 by the late Jose Campos (recently honored as the “Father of
the Philippine Pharmaceutical Industry” by the Philippine Medical
Association), Unilab has established a strategic network of
manufacturing facilities and marketing operations throughout
Southeast Asia.
Unilab brands are well established as market
leaders in the Philippines and in many of Southeast Asia’s major
consumer and ethical pharmaceutical markets.
Unilab develops and markets a wide range of
ethical and consumer products in the following therapeutic segments:
anti-infectives, somatics, cough/cold, cardiovascular,
gastrointestinal, anti-asthma, endocrine, metabolic,
anti-tuberculosis, dermatologicals, vitamins/minerals, dietetics and
women’s health.
Working on the corporate tagline, “Trusted
Quality Healthcare,” Unilab operates strategically located
manufacturing facilities throughout Southeast Asia, linked to
extensive and expanding market coverage and technical support.
Unilab has developed significant technical and
marketing alliances with major multinational pharmaceutical
companies and research organizations based in the United States,
Europe and Japan. Growing international involvement, a broader
regional role and more diverse operational activities are
underpinned by a committed and highly trained work force. It is
therefore from a platform of strength and with an ethos of integrity
that Unilab confidently views the challenge of delivering
broad-based health care to a dynamically changing Asia in the 21st
century.
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