Novo Nordisk grapples with diabetes

How alarming is Vietnam’s diabetes challenge?

Diabetes has reached epidemic proportions across Vietnam, with recent studies suggesting an estimated five million people are affected.

In the ten years between 2002-2012, the number of people in Vietnam diagnosed with diabetes increased 211 per cent, catapulting Vietnam among those countries with the highest diabetes growth rates worldwide. The transition to a ‘western’ lifestyle in Vietnam, as well as lack of physical activity and inappropriate nutritional regimes are to be blamed for this.

To combat diabetes, Vietnam is facing many challenges including a limited number of medical staff trained in diabetes care, low levels of awareness about diabetes, a large number of undiagnosed patients and poor diabetes care infrastructure, which are leading to the fact that more than 60 per cent of the five million people with diabetes remain undiagnosed, six out of ten patients suffer from complications, and the majority of patients fail to achieve treatment targets due to sub-optimal treatment.

Novo Nordisk was the first foreign firm to bring insulin into Vietnam two decades ago, but only established a representative office in Ho Chi Minh City in late 2011. Your staff numbers have shot up from two to 85 in two years. How is your firm’s quick expansion helping the country’s diabetes battle?

Given the growing challenge of diabetes, it’s important that we focus on educating health professionals and the public on how to diagnose diabetes and ensure the health service here can provide the most effective treatments. Our staff are working with health professionals to conduct awareness-raising campaigns educating doctors to understand, detect and treat diabetes. That’s why we’re rapidly expanding our staff and I expect to see a strong annual increase in our staff numbers within the coming years.

In the coming years, we will continue to co-operate with the Ministry of Health and Vietnam Association of Diabetes and Endocrinology in implementing the Vietnam Diabetes Care Programme (VDCP) which was launched in 2012 with a three-year action plan. The programme focuses on five clear objectives, namely to increase public awareness about diabetes; increase the number of medical staff trained in diabetes care, collect robust data on current status of diabetes care; improve the diabetes care infrastructure in Vietnam and improve diabetes care in children and pregnancy.

Does your firm have any plans to establish manufacturing facilities in Vietnam?

We have no such plans at the moment. We only produce insulin in one place in the world, and that’s Copenhagen. Obviously, the larger scale the plant is, the cheaper our products are. If we constructed plants across the world, the cost would be too expensive and the quality would not be the same. That helps ensure the patients get the same quality no matter where they live and the medicine is affordable. We will continue selling products via Vietnam-based distribution firms.

Can Vietnam act as a hub for your firm’s research activities?

I expect in the future we could invest in research collaboration. This is very important for Vietnam because then the technology could be transferred here. Also, via our international standard clinical trials, patients and medical staff in Vietnam can participate in the global development of new medicine. At the moment little has been done in this field in Vietnam so we have to get to this stage first. That would also be our firm’s next step in Vietnam.

What should the government do to enhance access to innovative, quality medicines produced by multinational pharmaceutical companies like Novo Nordisk?

I’d like to encourage the government to open up the economy as much as possible, because only through collaboration and open trade can Vietnam grow in the long run. China, South Korea and Singapore, and earlier on Japan, are typical examples of such strong growth. I think Vietnam can import products that are effectively manufactured somewhere else, while the country can export products that it is very good at producing, like agricultural products and increasingly, high-tech products such as communication equipment.

Lars Rebien Sorensen, president and CEO of Novo Nordisk last week met with Vietnam’s State President Truong Tan Sang and Danish Ambassador John Nielsen. During the meeting, Sorensen briefed the president on Novo Nordisk activities in the country and the company’s commitment to enhancing access to quality care in diabetes management.