Why is the supply of imported anticancer drug Herceptin in short supply?

Ms. Mei from Hebei is 36 years old this year. She was diagnosed with stage III breast cancer in June 5438+February last year. She had a right mastectomy in the Cancer Hospital of China Academy of Medical Sciences, and now she is receiving radiotherapy in her hometown of Hebei.

Ms. Mei said that according to her weight, Herceptin, a drug for the treatment of breast cancer, needs 2/kloc-0 once a day, and the price is 7600 yuan, which is about 17 times a year.

"There is only one local hospital with Herceptin. The doctor won't prescribe medicine for me, saying that the supply is tight and there are not enough patients in this hospital." Ms. Mei said that the early treatment had cost a lot of money, and she usually saved money, but now there is no medicine to worry about. In a patient exchange group that Ms. Mei joined, everyone hoped that this medicine would arrive as soon as possible.

It is understood that Herceptin was included in the national medical insurance catalogue in 20 17. Through medical insurance negotiation, the price was reduced from 20,000 yuan to 7,600 yuan, greatly reducing the financial burden of cancer patients. At the same time of sharp price reduction, the demand for Herceptin in the whole country has also surged in a short time.

As a pharmaceutical manufacturer and supplier, Shanghai Roche Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. responded that it has taken a number of active measures to supply Herceptin in China market, including implementing the "China market first" strategy on a global scale, and supplying the production base in China market with the largest production capacity. At the same time, optimize the logistics channels with relevant domestic partners and make overall arrangements among provinces and cities. In addition, it also applied to the state to transfer Herceptin for the China market from the existing production base to a higher production base.

Roche said that in the past month, relevant state ministries and commissions have listened carefully to the reactions of patients and enterprises, and successively approved two applications for transferring Herceptin to a high-capacity production base and accelerating the release of imported drugs on shore. Based on this, Roche predicts that the tight supply of Herceptin in China will be effectively alleviated in the next one to two months.