The Netherlands based company Pharming NV is HAE International’s first Global Access Program pharmaceutical partner. Mischa Boeijen, Senior Product Manager Ruconest of Pharming, says:
“Pharming is extremely privileged to be part of the Global Access Program, a successful collaboration project initiated with HAE International. We are delighted to be able to provide Ruconest, a potentially life-saving therapy to those patients in South Africa who would otherwise not be able to access it. Pharming looks forward to extending our reach to patients across the globe in the future.”
The third partner behind the Global Access Program is the specialist service provider Inceptua Medicines Access. Mark Corbett, Executive Vice-President says:
“Helping to ensure access to treatments for patients in need – where suitable products are not commercially available – is at the very core of what we do. At Inceptua, we are pleased to be supporting HAE International on their critical mission to facilitate access to HAE therapies through the Global Access Program”.
According to Adrienne de Jongh research at the Lung Clinic where the HAE unit is based has concluded that one dose of Ruconest more than paid for itself as it reduced the need for many hours of hospital time. For this reason, Ruconest has been approved for use on the patients in the public sector as well as the private sector, which she calls a huge step forward:
“There is at present no modern HAE medication registered in South Africa and these patients would have had to rely on fresh frozen plasma. However delays in time, matching, ordering and getting supplies delivered often resulted in unnecessary delays, which allowed the HAE attacks time to intensify and consequently took longer to resolve.”