Vietnam one of the most dynamic, important pharma markets in Southeast Asia: Sandoz exec

You once said that Sandoz Vietnam is offering very high-quality drugs made in Europe, but the price can be 40-50% cheaper for anti-infectives and sometimes 30-40% cheaper for oncology drugs. Please explain why the prices can be that low.

I mean innovative drugs for cancer in Vietnam. We are offering the same drugs, which are called a biosimilar or sometimes a generic, but with a cost difference, a price difference of 30 to 40% cheaper.

How can you make Sandoz products familiar and suitable to the Vietnamese market?

We believe that Vietnam is one of the most dynamic and important markets in Southeast Asia. Sandoz, as a global leader in generic and biosimilar medicines, is decided to invest massively in this market through its core mission, which is pioneering access for patient in partnerships with healthcare professionals and making sure that the biggest number of patients will benefit from our therapeutic solutions.

Currently, Sandoz products are available in almost 64 provinces of the country, whether it is in hospitals, public hospitals, private hospitals, or the retail market. That really means Sandoz's very strong desire and strong willingness to expand its presence and grant very wide medicine access to Vietnamese patients.

I believe Vietnamese patients or Vietnamese consumers are very demanding in terms of quality, and that's something that really impresses me.

When I first came to the country, the population here was constantly looking forward to having very high-quality drugs. At the same time, they were also very concerned about the price of medication. And in this global context of supply issues, tension around raw materials and access to drug availability is something that is also very, very important.

Sandoz is proud to be one of the rare companies that can offer affordable prices, very high quality, and also continuous supply, and I think this fits perfectly with the Vietnamese consumer and Vietnamese patient choice.

In addition to our product portfolio, allow me to tell you about the investment, the partnership that we are having with healthcare organizations and healthcare professionals this year.

We have been signing two major memorandums of understanding with the Ho Chi Minh Oncology Hospital and K Hospital in Hanoi. The purpose of those MoUs is to materialize and formalize a long-term investment partnership with hospitals that aims to continuously train and develop doctors' capabilities in terms of training and knowledge about the latest therapeutic actualities.

At the same time, we massively leverage generating what we call real-world data. In the future, we hope to include Vietnam in the clinical resources that Sandoz is going to launch for the pipeline of the biosimilar products.

Does Sandoz commit to maintaining low prices for a long time, or is it only applicable in the first year? What is the basis for the company to have such competitiveness?

We are talking about Vietnam, an emerging country with increasing capabilities and awareness of the population around everything that has to do with healthcare.

Let me just give you some global data: actually, generics account for more than 85% of the total volume of drugs worldwide, while the cost is only 30% of the total healthcare expenditure in the world.

It shows you really how much the impact is, the positive impact of generics right now, and I think we can also have the similarity, the same parallel in Vietnam because the numbers are not very far.

As you know, our mission is to pioneer access to patients, which means expanding our access to the maximum number of patients, and the translation of this mission is our capabilities.

Our abilities also produce what we call "the economy of scale". So Sandoz today has one of the largest factories worldwide of anti-infectives and also of biosimilars in oncology that are serving more than 1 billion patients worldwide, and this is basically the mission, the definition of a generic product. So a generic product mission is to maximize the access for patients.

As I mentioned previously, our strength at Sandoz is relying on three main pillars: affordability, quality, and availability of the supply. We are really proud to combine all of them. Unfortunately, today, not all companies are able to present those three pillars to all the healthcare systems. Whether we can maintain and sustain those affordable prices in the market will also depend on how flexible the environment we evolve in is going to be.

Today there is, as you all know, worldwide inflation. There are also a lot of issues with getting access to raw materials that are needed to produce the drugs. And there is also a big tension on supply. I think you know about some geopolitical tensions that make products take longer time to be available. Despite all of this, we still continue to provide the Vietnamese market with high-quality, affordable, and continuous availability of drugs.

How about the comparison between the Vietnamese market and other countries? Does Sandoz have any policies to support the Vietnamese market in the healthcare sector as well as the treatment of the two special diseases mentioned above?

Our desire is to stay for a long term in Vietnam. I think, first of all, the decision to create a legal entity of Sandoz in Vietnam is the sincere and genuine translation of the willingness of the global company to stay for the very long term. In some other countries, we do not have a legal entity, just the representative office or working with some distributors.

In Vietnam, we took the decision to establish our legal entity with our own warehouse. It means that we really want to engage ourselves in the very long term. I was also talking about some real-world data that we are generating and about my personal plan and agenda to include Vietnam in the global clinical research that Sandoz is about to conduct.

Regarding your question about the Vietnam pharmaceutical market, I think it's one of the biggest now in Southeast Asia. I think starting from next year, Vietnam's pharmaceutical market will outpace Thailand, reaching around $8 billion. The figure is expected to reach $15 billion in the very next decade.

For me it's the translation of two things. The first is the massive investment that government and healthcare authorities are making in the healthcare sector. The second thing is the increasing awareness of the population toward everything that has to do with health and with health access.

So as a pharmaceutical company, we are really satisfied and happy to see the massive investment efforts that the government is making in terms of increasing infrastructure. We see numbers of new hospitals that are being built, whether in big metropolitan areas or in rural, remote provinces. This means more and more patients will be able to have treatment in better conditions and also have better access to healthcare. And as a pharmaceutical company, our commitment and our engagement is not only providing drugs but also supporting healthcare professionals.

We believe that we also have a mission toward the community, and that's why we have been organizing a very big campaign about antimicrobial resistance. That's a topic that is also very personal to me as a pharmacist.

As I told you, Vietnam is one of the countries facing the biggest rate of antimicrobial resistance, simply because a lot of people are taking antibiotics, misusing antibiotics, or taking them in the wrong way. We have conducted this campaign to raise awareness about antibiotics, and we are very proud of the impact it has made, and this is just the beginning of the journey for us.

How many products does Sandoz already have in the hospitals?

The total number of products Sandoz Vietnam has in the country is around 60. And one of our priorities is to solidify this portfolio and bring up as much as possible in terms of innovation, biosimilars, and new generics. We also plan to register quite a number of new products that are going to address additional concerns and health burdens for the patients.

Where are Sandoz’s factories located?

In Vietnam, currently we don't own factories. We have a warehouse situated in Long An province, 40 minutes from Ho Chi Minh City. Our factories and facilities are located mostly in Europe, for example Germany, Slovenia, and Spain, and Austria.

How big is the warehouse in Long An, and what is the level of investment? Will the company develop more warehouses in Vietnam in the future?

Having a warehouse is a necessity when you apply for a legal entity license in Vietnam as a pharmaceutical company. That's what we call it a must-have. The warehouse's purpose is to organize the importation flow of our drugs and the distribution flow of our drugs to the hospitals, healthcare partners, and distributors. I would be happy to invite you to make a visit to our warehouse. Maybe we can organize this in the near future.

When it comes to factories and production investment, I think that there are very good signals right now from the Vietnamese government and Vietnam healthcare authorities to encourage local production and to also incentivize investment for drugs.

I think this is definitely a very good option for all the foreign companies and for all the multinational companies, and I am very optimistic to see the network of facilities and of factories expanding in Vietnam. Today in Vietnam, we have around 150 employees.

In March, Sandoz signed an MoU with Ho Chi Minh City Oncology Hospital. Could you elaborate on the support efforts of Sandoz for cancer patients as the number of patients diagnosed with cancer is increasing?

Those MoUs are what we call strategic partnerships with the two biggest oncology hospitals in the country. The purpose is to sponsor and support seminars and symposiums and continuous education for healthcare professionals, especially in the northern regions and some remote areas in the south.

Our purpose is to improve cancer management and prevention by providing those doctors with the latest knowledge and treatment strategies. We have signed those MoUs, and in parallel, we are also making sure that all those hospitals benefit from our drugs, our therapeutic solutions, and our medicines, and we expect to reconduct those partnerships in the future with those hospitals and with many others.