Published by CodeBlue

Dr Dzul says IJN has agreed to switch from innovators to generics. The health minister hopes this will generate “large savings” for the government. IJN’s prices for its 10 most prescribed drugs charged to MOH are up to 4,300% higher than MOH procurement.

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 12 – Dzulkefly Ahmad confirmed today that the National Heart Institute (IJN) has agreed to substitute innovative medicines with generics for public patients to reduce the government’s cost burden.

The health minister explained that the Ministry of Health’s (MOH) policy for treatment is a generic-first policy.

“Today, I was at ease to hear an explanation from IJN management themselves that they will also take the approach to use generics,” Dzulkefly told the Dewan Rakyat during the ministry’s winding-up of Budget 2025, in response to a question from Bandar Kuching MP Dr Kelvin Yii on the matter.

“From the aspects of efficacy and safety, we should not doubt generics because these medications have undergone bioequivalence studies. Now the whole world uses generics; not just our country, but also the United States, Europe, Australia, everywhere.”

Dzulkefly expressed hope that IJN’s switch to generics would generate “large savings” for the government.

CodeBlue previously reported an instruction from the MOH and the Ministry of Finance (MOF) to IJN to switch its government patients – which comprise about 85 per cent of IJN’s patient load – from innovator drugs to generic equivalents to reduce the MOH’s cost burden.

MOH’s payments to Institut Jantung Negara Sdn Bhd (IJNSB) for the care of pensioners, civil servants, and underprivileged patients at the top cardiac centre have skyrocketed in the past decade from RM361.8 million in 2013 to RM606.5 million in 2023.

A 2023 analysis sighted by CodeBlue found extremely high drug prices charged by IJN to the MOH. These prices range from 42 per cent to a whopping 4,323 per cent higher than the MOH’s procurement for the 10 most prescribed medications, all innovators, including common statins.

The MOH estimates cost savings of RM130 million from just the 10 most commonly used drugs at IJN if patients were to be treated in government health care facilities. Cost savings for the MOH mean a revenue loss for IJN, a cardiovascular and thoracic care hospital owned by the Minister of Finance Incorporated (MOF Inc.).

The Pharmaceutical Association of Malaysia (PhAMA), which mainly represents pharmaceutical multinational companies, has said that a “sudden change” in the treatment regimens of critically ill patients at IJN “may not be advisable without clinical justification by attending physicians.”

Previously, the Malaysian Organisation of Pharmaceutical Industries (MOPI) stressed that generics and biosimilars undergo stringent regulatory approval processes by the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency (NPRA) to ensure safety, efficacy, and quality.

“Generics and biosimilars are not ‘cheap alternatives’ – they are therapeutically equivalent to their originator counterparts.”

Correction: MOH’s annual payments to IJNSB are in the millions, not billions, as initially written in the seventh paragraph. The errors have been corrected.