October 13
T REATMENT for patients and prevention of diseases rely on vaccines and drugs in the medical arena. Up to now, nobody can produce the drugs and vaccines for the treatment of COVID-19 patients but give necessary vaccines and drugs to them for prevention of the pandemic.
Myanmar realized the socialist economic system in manufacturing of pharmaceuticals in the past but the production of pharmaceuticals is operated on a commercial scale depending on the market economic system.
In implementing the market economic system, priority must be given to meeting the local demand in the manufacturing of the drugs. It is important for ensuring the high quality of pharmaceuticals to compete with other medical products in the market at fair prices.
Myanmar started the operation of Hepatitis (B) Factory in May 2007. Since its establishment, the factory has been continuously manufacturing the vaccines. If necessary, the factory needs to change its production forms such as COVID-19 vaccines and other vaccines in cooperation in medical technologies with foreign countries.
Currently, the government gives encouragement to the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals at home. Although the government eases restrictions for the production of medicines at home, procedures of taxation must be arranged necessarily. Likewise, raw material importers need to pay deserved tax amount to the State dutifully.
In striving for production of COVID-19 vaccines at the Hepatitis (B) Factory locally, the factory needs to soonest produce the vaccines for current use with a long term plan to take the research and development measures which are the lifeblood for production of highly-qualified products to be able to compete with other medical products in the market.
Although the expenditure will be high for the production and research of COVID-19 vaccines with the farsightedness of the worst situation based on changes of COVID-19 variants, the production of drugs will cut the spending on foreign exchange.
The government pledged to build a factory to manufacture the COVID-19 vaccines. When Myanmar possessed the medical technology and medical experts, the factory will be operated for the production of COVID-19 vaccines with the purpose of local consumption.
At present, the government arranges the production of hepatitis (B) vaccine as well as COVID-19 vaccine at the same factory before construction of a separate factory for the COVID-19 vaccine. Thanks to energetic efforts, Myanmar will be ready to produce COVID-19 vaccines in the future. GNLM
