The Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) said Thursday, April 22, that it is looking into prospects of adding more drugs that it would allow for emergency use on novel coroavirus disease (COVID-19) cases.
FDA director-general Eric Domingo told lawmakers in the House of Representatives that the agency is already exploring the possibilities to expand the list of its drug products under emergency use (DEU) amid the pandemic.
"Actually pinalawak na nga namin to living guidelines para mas maraming grupo na gumagawa…para pwede po nilang maisama doon sa living guidelines at maaral para ma-increase natin sa DEU (we have expanded our living guideline to include more groups…so they could include it and study the living guidelines to increase DEU)," Domingo said during the virtual hearing the House committee on good government and public public accountability.
"Of course we are exploring the possibilities," he assured congressmen.
Domingo referred to the Health Technology Assessment Council (HTAC), the University of the Philippines' National Institutes of Health (UP-NIH) and other advisory bodies tapped by the government to recommend guidelines on the use of drug products for COVID-19 treatment.
DEUs, he explained, are issued for registered and repurposed investigational drugs.
He added that the registration of drugs for DEU should be based o the Philippine COVID-19 Living Recommendation, which provides an up-to-date review of scientific evidence and consolidates recommendations from medical societies and institution on the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of the coronavirus infection.
Under an existing FDA circular, current products under DEUs for COVID-19 were tocilizumab, lopinavir and ritonavir, chloroquine phosphate, hydroxychloroquine sulfate; although the regulatory agency said that it may be updated.
Bagong Henerasyon Party-list representative and House Deputy Speaker Bernadette Herrera-Dy said the list should be expanded to include more possible medications for COVID-19.
The FDA circular, she claimed, was "stifling" the capability doctors in treating their patients.
"Ako (For me), the more drugs that we put under there, the better. Because the more choices our doctors have, and freely, makakapasok ang mga gamot na 'to (these drugs will enter our country)," Herrera-Dy said.
"It's important that we make all medicines available and accessible, tutal doctors din naman ang magdedesisyon kung ano ang gagamitin nila (since doctors would be the ones who will decide what to use) for a particular patient. I don't think we should limit it," she added.
Herrera-Dy is among the lawmakers of who are pushing for the widespread use of ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug, for COVID-19 treatment and prevention in the country.
The House leader told the FDA to include inputs from the Concerned Doctors and Citizens of the Philippines (CDC-PH), a group that has been advocating for ivermectin.