La Jornada: Mexico, in a position to reverse dependence on medications

Mexico faces a high dependence on inputs to produce medicines. It is a vulnerability factor that can be reversed. The conditions are in place to do so, says Luz Astrea Ocampo, president of the board of directors of the Mexican Association of Pharmaceutical Laboratories (Amelaf). The review of the trade agreement with the United States and Canada is an opportunity. Also the policies that are being promoted by the federal government, in coordination with the industry, point in this direction, says the general director of the Neolpharma Group.

There are two countries, China and India, from where 90 percent of the active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) arrive in Mexico, explains Luz Astrea Ocampo, in an interview with La Jornada. APIs are the biological compound in the medication that exerts the therapeutic effect on the patient’s body. The mere substance, for the layman.

“The current geopolitical tensions, which make the transit of goods difficult, as well as the covid-19 pandemic in 2020, revealed the importance of no country ceasing to have national production of inputs for medicines,” he says. Bring the relevance of “health sovereignty” to the conversation. There is a high risk for the country – he adds – of maintaining a dependency like the current one.

–When a country has its local production plant, it can react faster than when it has to import –he states–. Maritime transportation times from Asia are long and when there is a war, a natural disaster, a hurricane, etc., they take longer. If there is local manufacturing, there is a guarantee not only of supply, but of quality.

–What is needed, from the government and the private sector, to advance on this issue?

–I’m going to start with the raw materials part. We are less than 20 manufacturers. I chair the Mexican Association of Pharmaceutical Laboratories and we have just created a raw materials committee. The intention is to collaborate with our authorities to, together, create that enabling environment that has to do with a regulatory framework that makes procedures faster, incorporates our products into the drug registries of local manufacturers more quickly and helps build bridges of dialogue with the United States to export products made in Mexico. I also consider it important to create industrial parks. The Wellness Poles are already there. We must look for ways to collaborate to give them that vocation of raw materials, not finished products.

He considers that at this moment – after a government decree in May placed the pharmaceutical industry as a key factor for the country’s development – there are conditions to turn Mexico into a global API manufacturing center. “There is that concurrence of a government that wants it to work and a private initiative that says: ‘we have to build it,’” he points out. “There is a huge opportunity, there is also a lot of shortage in the United States and Mexico can play an important role.”

In addition to reducing dependence on Asia, strengthening the Mexican pharmaceutical supplies industry has a clear economic contribution. Auctions of medicines for the public sector, not only aimed at the lowest price, are an example.

“Let’s think about everything that a medicine produced in the country generates: jobs here, taxes that are paid in the country, that stay here, unlike buying a medicine that may be cheaper, that comes from Asia, but the profits, the jobs go abroad.”

There are, he emphasizes, conditions to grow internally as an industry and also do so with an eye on the United States. It is possible, he considers, that sales of Mexican medicines to that country – now around 2 billion dollars a year – will grow two or three times.

–It is possible to achieve that growth. But it cannot be done without the raw materials. We can reach any point within the United States in between 24 and 72 hours, unlike the weeks it takes from China, especially since there is the intention of the US government to reduce its dependence on Asian products, he mentions. So we can grow two or three times and the interesting thing about this sector is that it starts from petrochemicals, continues with the chemical industry; Then, with that input, the raw material is made, which is then processed in a drug manufacturing plant and in these drug manufacturing plants.

–How does the outlook look, with the review process of the trade agreement underway?

–Mexico is a strong economy, one of the main ones in the world. The country has a population bonus that allows it to grow. The business base of Mexico, the Mexican businessman, is not a weather vane that comes and goes, they are family businesses, of different sizes that are going to stay here and I see a desire from the government to support this. We have to take advantage of it.

–Do you think that in the North American region the pharmaceutical industry can achieve integration between the three countries of the type that exists with the automotive industry?

–Of course. Unlike other sectors where there is already a well-established manufacturing base, here the three countries have to create it. There is no strong pharmachemical manufacturing base in any of the three countries. This represents a huge opportunity for everyone, not only on the part of the chemists; There is also the possibility of creating machinery, equipment, technology, quality services. In the three countries there are a series of universities and companies that can contribute a lot to closing this gap in a short time.

–Is there any initiative in this regard?

–We started to have those dialogues. But just read what the governments of the three countries have announced and it is an authentic desire to build that base, to generate their own sovereignty.