KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 2 — Denmark’s Novo Nordisk has promised to continue supplying human insulin to Malaysia, amid an unprecedented nationwide shortage of the lifesaving diabetes medication.
The Danish pharmaceutical giant currently supplies 20 per cent of the human insulin supply for Malaysia’s Ministry of Health (MOH); 80 per cent of the MOH’s human insulin supply is procured from Indian biosimilars company Biocon Biologics that operates an insulin manufacturing facility in Johor, the only such local plant.
“Novo Nordisk will continue to supply human insulin to patients living with diabetes in Malaysia. Our supply of human insulin to the country has remained stable,” a Novo Nordisk spokesperson told CodeBlue in a brief statement.
“We take our commitment to help people with chronic diseases very seriously and we are in ongoing dialogue with the Malaysian health authorities to ensure that patients living with diabetes in the country have access to lifesaving insulin.
“Globally, we are faced with a higher-than-expected demand across most of our portfolio. That is why we are expanding our global production, which already runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and we are investing significantly in expanding capacity across all relevant production facilities.”
CodeBlue asked Novo Nordisk whether it had participated or if it planned to participate in any new tenders by the MOH for the supply of human insulin beyond its current procurement contract that will end in six months next April. It is unclear how much human insulin Novo Nordisk supplies university hospitals and private health care facilities in Malaysia.
Al Jazeera reported last May that multinational pharmaceutical companies, including Novo Nordisk, were slashing insulin production in the United States in favour of more lucrative weight-loss drugs.
Novo Nordisk and American drug maker Eli Lilly reportedly control 75 per cent of the global insulin market; France’s Sanofi also produces insulin.
Last week, Health Minister Dzulkefly Ahmad blamed the country’s current shortage of human insulin on Biocon Biologics’ failure to meet its contractual obligations. Like Novo Nordisk, the MOH’s procurement contract with Biocon Biologics is also a three-year contract from April 29, 2022 to April 28, 2025.
In downplaying the insulin shortage crisis, Dzulkefly claimed that human insulin supply could last until the end of the year, even though the MOH has already been forced to plan to switch 45 per cent of eligible diabetes patients currently on human insulin treatment to more expensive SGLT2 inhibitors or insulin analogs.
Priority groups, excluding people with Type 2 diabetes, were also listed for insulin naive patients to begin insulin treatment. Such a significant policy change was not previously reported with short-term insulin shortages in past years.
The health minister also urged alternative drug makers to supply human insulin to the MOH, promising a fast-track 60-day evaluation process by the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency (NPRA).
