Traphaco - Pioneer in National Pharmaceutical Strategy

I heard her name and Traphaco Joint Stock Company quite long ago. After working with the Nam Dinh Provincial People's Committee and learning on mass media, I searched “Traphaco” on Google, the search engine returned about 215,000 results (0.33 seconds). This evidenced how popular she and Traphaco where she was the Chairwoman of the Board of Directors were. Thus, I had to think a lot of questions I could ask when I met her in person. After several telephone contacts, she arranged a meeting for me after she left a meeting on pharmacy development, although she was very busy at the end of the year.

 

Unlike my imagination, when I mentioned medicinal plant growing, she cheerfully told me the story of how Traphaco developed medicinal materials. Opening the story on how Vietnamese organic medicinal materials were developed, she said. In Vietnamese drug production industry, pharmaceutical production depends on 90 per cent of foreign inputs and medicinal production relies 70 per cent on foreign inputs. Meanwhile, the recent years, Traphaco’s products use 93 per cent of inputs sourced in Vietnam. Particularly, Boganic and Ampelop use 100 per cent of domestic clean medicinal ingredients planted by Traphaco and harvested by farmers under GACP-WHO standards. It is very proud of Traphaco to be a leading producer of medicinal herbs in Vietnam. Especially, this approach is also in line with the "Vietnam National Strategy for Pharmaceutical Industry Development towards 2020, with a vision to 2030" approved by the Prime Minister. The success of Traphaco has led the way for some other pharmaceutical companies to grow medicinal herbs and contribute to the sustainable development of Vietnamese traditional medicine.

 

Thuan said Traphaco defined its permanent, perhaps only, growth path: Producing medicines from medicinal herbs. The noteworthy turning point to the spectacular and comprehensive breakthrough development of Traphaco is the launch Greenplan Project in 2009 with the goal of creating green materials. To build material zones, Traphaco actively advanced the close cooperation among State agencies, scientists, businesses and farmers. After many years of hard studies across the country and thousands of hours of in-depth working with experts, Traphaco became the first pharmaceutical company in the north to have four medicinal herbs to be certified GACP-WHO by the Traditional Medicine Administration under the Ministry of Health. The four certified plants are grown on a total area of 827 ha in Lao Cai, Nam Dinh, Hoa Binh and Phu Yen provinces. This is an important result because it not only sets the standards for Traphaco but also creates a common standard for the pharmaceutical market in Vietnam. And, Traphaco reconfirms its advancement in sustainable pharmaceutical research and development in accordance with international standards.

 

On each material zone, Traphaco always closely cooperates with farmers in all processes, from variety selection and planting to harvesting and processing in order to assure farmers of growing cash-spinning plants. In reality, in some areas in Lao Cai and Nam Dinh provinces, a hectare of lentils or artichoke generates annual revenue of VND200-300 million. Developing farming areas and exploiting medicinal herbs not only generate employment and income for farmers, but also generate stable input sources. Hence, in the context of economic downturn, Traphaco still managed to maintain annual growth of 20-30 per cent.

 

Regarding Traphaco’s development strategy, Thuan said building clean material zones (Nam Dinh, Lao Cai, Hoa Binh, and other provinces) not only brings benefits to farmers and businesses, but also raises the value and conserves rare crop genes of Vietnam. And, from its simplest thought, Traphaco hopes its best products will serve Vietnamese people in general and farmers with Traphaco in particular.

 

She said Traphaco is now running two traditional medicine and modern drug production plants meeting WHO-GMP standards. Traphaco pioneers in applying advanced management tools and modern quality management systems like ISO 9001, ISO 14000, GPs and 5S. So, its products are always very competitive over foreign products in terms of quality and price. In June 2014, Traphaco was named the "Star of Vietnamese medicine". The company also has the most products.

 

To accomplish the "green health path" strategy, Traphaco hopes to have more policy support for growing and developing clean material zones. The Government should have policies to direct medical units from central and grassroots levels to give priority to herbal medicines, especially in localities where medicinal herbs are grown.

With its value chains, clean material zones and green technologies, has become a pioneer in the national medicine strategy. According to the Prime Minister’s Decision 68-QD-TTg dated January 10, 2014, Vietnam will strive to meet 20 per cent of input materials for domestic production and domestic medicines will account for 80 per cent of total medicine value.