Kicking the foreign drug habit in Myanmar

 10-Oct-15, Frontier Myanmar

Progress Biochem’s new drug making factory looks as if it belongs in the International Space Station, not among the warehouses and smokestacks of Yangon’s industrial outskirts.

Image: Ann Wang / Frontier Myanmar

The company’s chief executive officer, U Htoo Myint, didn’t try to contain his pride when he showed off its immaculate white corridors, glittering steel machinery, World Health Organization-standard laboratory and Myanmar-born architects and engineers.

All the factory needs to begin making Myanmar’s first privately-produced medicine is a licence.

For the last half century, a handful of state-owned factories – and one public-private joint venture – have produced Myanmar’s meagre pharmaceutical output. All other pharmaceutical products – between 80 percent and 90 percent – are imported, either from reputable international companies or bargain-bin producers that slip substandard or phony medication past the Department of Food and Drug Administration, the FDA.

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