Paul Petrelli
General Manager, Gilead Sciences Canada
Canada is at a crossroads. Facing geopolitical turbulence not seen in generations, we are energetically protecting our national interest. But what is our national interest?
Health sovereignty is at its core. We take it for granted that all Canadians deserve equitable access to excellent care, and recent global health crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic, have demonstrated the critical importance of health system resilience.
Building a more resilient healthcare system
At Gilead, resilience starts with discovering, developing, and delivering innovative therapeutics to fight serious diseases. Our therapies have helped alter the trajectory of illnesses like HIV and viral hepatitis. When the world was reeling from COVID-19, Gilead developed the first approved treatment for it. We continue to take on big challenges, including difficult-to-treat cancers.
This gives us a powerful perspective on how Canada can meet this moment. “We are proud of our investments,” said Paul Petrelli, General Manager, Gilead Sciences Canada. “We are driving groundbreaking research at our site in Edmonton, supporting nearly 100 unique clinical trial sites across the country, and strengthening our manufacturing capabilities to ensure Canada stays an important part of the global supply chain.”
We also know homegrown innovation is just one part of health sovereignty.
What Canadians want most is access to care when they need it, including life-changing therapies, regardless of where in the world they’ve been developed.
Federal Health Minister Marjorie Michel recognized this in a recent interview, characterizing health sovereignty as “how we can provide equitable access to treatments for Canadians, medicines, vaccines, everything.”
In practice, this demands an environment that recognizes the full value of innovation in healthcare.
Health equity starts with access
Many Canadians are waiting too long to access medicines. In a recent report that looked at twenty advanced economies, Canada placed last in wait times from a therapy’s global launch to its coverage by public insurance — an average of over four years, compared to three months in the United States. In the same study, Canada was second-last in the proportion of new medicines reimbursed by public insurance over the past decade.
There is no good reason why Canadians should wait so long for life-saving therapies. But changing this will require a broader understanding of the impact of medicines — allowing Canadians to live fuller, healthier lives while avoiding downstream health system costs.
Recent initiatives promise to accelerate access to medicines: Ontario’s FAST (Funding Accelerated for Specific Treatments) program; ongoing red tape reduction initiatives at Health Canada; foreign regulators’ decisions; the pan-Canadian Pharmaceutical Alliance (pCPA)’s Early Negotiation Process and pCPA Temporary Access Process. We need to build on this.
Today, we have a unique opportunity to drive change that really matters. But we must understand that health sovereignty cannot mean going at it alone. Breakthroughs are happening all over the world. Our health system needs to be nimbler and adequately resourced, making innovation more equitably accessible to all.
Because our success will be measured by whether Canadians can access the care and life-changing, life-saving medicines they need, when they need them.
Learn more about Gilead Sciences Canada, Inc. by visiting gilead.ca.
This article was made possible with funding from Gilead Sciences Canada.