Canadian patients would benefit if European or US Rx drug approvals were accepted

Canadian patients are denied the health benefits of many new medicines for months, if not years, waiting for their government to duplicate approvals already provided in other jurisdictions, concludes a new study published by the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank.

The Case for Mutual Recognition of Drug Approvals points out that nearly all newly-patented prescription drugs approved by the regulator Health Canada were also approved by the USA and the European Union – but much earlier. For example, 30 of a group of 31 drugs approved by Health Canada in 2011/2012 were approved by a median of 386 days earlier in the USA. In Europe, all 31 were approved by a median of 267 days earlier.

“Important new cancer drugs like Avastin and Jevtana were only available to patients in Canada more than a year after receiving marketing approval in either the United States or Europe,” said Nadeem Esmail, Fraser Institute director of health policy studies and co-author of the study, adding: “Such needless delay unquestionably had a negative effect on those patients whose lives could have been extended by these drugs.”