Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy is about to enter the Irish market but people will have to pay for it from their own pocket - for now at least
Camilla Sylvest, one of the top executive team at Novo Nordisk, says people have been very willing to pay out of their own pocket for Wegovy .“wonder drug” Wegovy is expected to be on sale in Ireland in the next 10 days but, even now, the woman charged with overseeing new product launches of the drug’s developer,
As Sylvest, in her role as executive vice-president of commercial strategy and corporate affairs, and her team plotted the drug’s roll-out, the company coping with two significant challenges – manufacturing capacity and reimbursement. That decision did not come from Sylvest’s desk but she says the company “generally looks for scalability, we’re looking for flexibility and then of course we’re also looking at how do we set up our distribution network from our suppliers in the best possible way”.
As of now, the only drug approved for weight management in Ireland is an older Novo Nordisk medicine, called Saxenda. And it can be prescribed only in limited cases – for patients with a body mass index of 35 or higher who are also prediabetic and at high risk of cardiovascular disease. Wegovy’s European approval allows it to be used by adults with a BMI of 30 – or 27 in people with weight-related health problems such as diabetes, high blood pressure, abnormal levels of fats in the blood, obstructive sleep apnoea or a history of heart attack, stroke or blood vessel problems.
It has been reported that only the highest 2.4mg dose will be coming into Ireland initially, though patients are advised to move gradually from a starting dose of 0.5mg to that 2.4mg dose over a four-month period. “One thing is about weight loss but the really concerning things for patients and the very expensive thing for society is the impact on these comorbidities and there Wegovy is the only brand that has proven that 20 per cent reduction in the big adverse cardiovascular events.
This comes in the context of recent comments from Prof Michael Barry, who assesses medicines’ value for money in his role as director of the National Centre for Pharmacoeconomics , that even if the State agreed to pay for weight loss drugs, it would probably come with similar conditions.
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