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news.New figures released by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry revealed that the balance of trade in pharmaceuticals - last year the highest of any sector in British has shown a decline, with the UK coming at the bottom of the league on prescribing modern treatments.
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According to the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI), medicines earned a trade surplus for the UK of GBP3.4 billion in 2005, a drop of 8% on the previous year, when the figure stood at GBP3.7 billion.
Prices of medicines are more than 21% lower in real terms than they were 10 years ago, while the percentage of its budget that the UK National Health Service (NHS) spends on medicines has dropped to 11%, the figures show.
The figures also confirm that the UK spends less on medicines than most other European countries, with the annual cost of prescriptions written by British doctors averaging just GBP205 per person. This is despite the fact that the number of NHS prescriptions dispensed increased by 37 million last year to 826 million in total.
“Our latest statistics show that there are some worrying signs over the health of the pharmaceutical industry in the UK,” said Dr Richard Barker, director general of the ABPI.
“We are providing medicines at lower, relative cost than 10 years ago; they are a smaller percentage of NHS spend than for many years; and other European countries, by and large, spend more on medicines than we do,” he continued. “However, we have serious concerns over the research and manufacturing base in the country, and our balance of trade – while still the envy of many other industries – is now showing a decrease.”
The ABPI’s annual review states that competition for the location of pharmaceutical manufacturing has grown ever fiercer with more and more countries developing the necessary technical infrastructure needed to take on this work. It is likely that the UK pharmaceutical manufacturing base will decline as older medicines lose their patent status and manufacturing is moved overseas. If the UK cannot attract new manufacturing investment for new products, output will decline, leading to the erosion of the balance of trade for medicines.
Pharmaceutical companies carry out around a quarter of all business R&D in the UK, and a third of their UK sales are reinvested in UK R&D. This investment directly employs 73,000 people and indirectly creates employment for a further 250,000 people. It has also resulted in the UK being responsible for around one in five of the world’s top 100 medicines – more than any country except the US and as many as the rest of Europe combined.
The review also highlights a number of other key industry issues. For example, there is increasing evidence that, even after medicines have been approved by the regulatory authorities and even recommended for NHS use under the various national assessment systems, some local health authorities are failing to make them available for patients.
On a more positive note, the review also says that a steady stream of innovative medicines from the laboratories of ABPI member companies is constantly adding to the treatments available for patients around the world. This year saw new treatments for conditions including bowel cancer, HIV, arthritis, high blood cholesterol and Parkinson’s disease. Potential new treatments in the final stages of trials include those for cancer, stroke, Crohn’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, HIV/AIDS, schizophrenia, and insomnia.