RED tape should be stripped away to give Filipinos access to all available treatments and medications for the deadly coronavirus disease-19 (COVID), a House leader said.

“In times of pandemic such as this where people are dying, red tape is a grave sin,” Deputy Speaker and Bagong Henerasyon (BH) party-list Rep. Bernadette Herrera said during the hearing conducted by the House committee on good government and public accountability on Thursday.

The committee looked into the guidelines and policies of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Department of Health (DoH) for the registration, utilization, manufacture, distribution or sale of COVID-19 treatment drugs that may hamper public health service delivery to the Filipino people.

The hearing took off from House Resolution (HR) No. 1711 recently filed by Herrera and Speaker Lord Allan Velasco.

During the hearing, Herrera urged the FDA to widen the list of drugs for emergency use to give doctors more choices as to the treatment they will give their COVID-19 patients.

“Our goal should always be for COVID-19 treatment protocols and prevention accessible and affordable to Filipinos,” Herrera said.

She also exhorted the FDA to look into the national guidelines on the registration of pharmaceutical products and suspend using the stringent ASEAN guidelines that has made it extremely difficult for drug manufacturers to register their products in the Philippines.

The party-list lawmaker nevertheless thanked the agency for widening the scope of clinical recommendations for drug registration rather than from the Philippine Society of Microbiology and Infectious Disease or PSMID alone.

Meanwhile, Herrera called on the FDA and DoH to strengthen the capacity of local drug manufacturers to address the pharmaceutical needs of the public, especially in times of national health emergencies.

The lawmaker said the FDA’s establishment of COVID-19 protocols will be for naught if the recommended drugs are not going to be made available to the public.

“We will only create despair to the FIlipino people when we say ‘o, eto yung magpapagaling sa iyo pero walang available sa bansa natin,’” Herrera said. “Ang sa akin, the question should also be, ‘do we have access to these drugs?’”

At the same time, Herrera pointed out that local pharmaceutical firms are capable of producing most of the recommended drugs in helping COVID-19 afflicted patients, yet these companies are having a hard time going through the bureaucracy of the FDA.

“Parang lumalabas mas madali pang mag-import kesa tulungan natin ‘yung ating local pharma to register their drugs here,” said Herrera. “Kapag ginamit natin ‘yung local pharma natin, mas marami ang supply, it could be cheaper at magiging mas accessible ang mga gamot natin.”

Herrera stressed that in times of national health emergencies such as the one the country is currently having with the presence of a pandemic, it is crucial that government agencies provide the citizens with all the resources they will need.

This becomes more apparent as first-world nations have become top priorities of pharmaceutical industries, leaving third-world nations in the dark in terms of availability of potentially life-saving drugs.

“We have to look into our own resources because we have to be self-sufficient,” she said. “The number one responsibility is to look into our very own resources and to make us of those.”

“Kaya dapat we should support our local pharma industries para mapabilis at mapadami ang iba’t ibang drugs available in our country,” she added.