Interview with Osman Khalid Waheed, CEO and Director – Ferozsons Laboratories Limited

‘Our pharma industry can become a manufacturing and export hub for vaccines’

Osman Khalid Waheed is the CEO of Ferozsons Laboratories Limited. He joined the company in1993 after obtaining his undergraduate degree from Harvard University, USA. He worked in logistics, sales and marketing before assuming the role of company president in 1999.

During this period, the company expanded its portfolio of medical solutions for critical diseases by forging alliances with a number of leading international partners including the Boston Scientific Inc.,

USA the world’s leading manufacturer of medical devices, a joint venture with the Bagó Group of Argentina to establish BF Biosciences Limited, Pakistan’s first biotech pharmaceutical manufacturing company and Gilead Sciences, Inc. USA for their range of Hepatitis C and anti-viral therapies to name a few.

Waheed is currently serving on the boards of a number of companies including Nestle Pakistan Limited, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), and has previously served on the boards of Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP), Pakistan Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC), and as President of the Rawalpindi Chamber of Commerce and Industries.

Edited excerpts of his conversation with BR Research are produced below:

BR Research: How have the last two years been for Ferozsons Labs?

Osman Khalid Waheed: The pandemic has been a busy period for us, not only in terms of supplying treatments for Covid-19 but also in understanding the gaps in the healthcare system. We were privileged to be a part of the global solution for the pandemic by becoming one of 6 international licensees initially selected to produce the antiviral Remdesivir for low and middle-income countries. In the last two years, we have been supplying the product to patients in Pakistan and twenty-four countries under license from Gilead Sciences Inc., USA. In total we have served over 100,000 patients worldwide, and the response has been extremely gratifying in terms of the impact we were able to have.

Of the licensees selected worldwide for Remdesivir, four were Indian giants, and in terms of capacity, we were one of the smallest ones. However, we made an internal commitment from day one thatif there was even a single patient who needed treatment in any of the licensed countries, we would make sure to reach them in minimum time and would bear the transportation cost. Very shortly thereafter, we received an emergency SOS from a patient in Costa Rica and managed to deliver the drug in under a week. The patient’s family sent us post-cards and coffee as thanks, and remains in touch with us. It was an extremely gratifying moment for all of us at the company, and a touching reminder of the importance of our mission.

We are a commercial entity, but pride ourselves in being a patient-centric organization. Whenever we look at working in a disease area, we study the entire patient journey and the pain points for the patient at each step, such as difficult in accessing treatment, compliance and other barriers.

One of the largest public health challenges in Pakistan has been the area of mental health. The need for mental health resources remains largely unaddressed in Pakistan, and the Covid pandemic magnified these vulnerabilities. Just a few months into the pandemic, we partnered with a local NGO, Umang, to enable a 24/7 free mental health helpline, run by a team of clinical psychologists and available to anyone. Since then, we have helped them scale up to provide over 25,000 sessions through a team of over 200 clinical psychologists.

We also realized that countries like Pakistan cannot afford to take a therapeutic or curative approach to public health. Preventive health strategies are critical for ensuring our health system’s sustainability and enabling Pakistan to meet its Sustainable Development Goals.

We believe this is where the opportunity lies. Pakistan has nominal domestic capacity in critical areas like vaccine production. For the world’s fifth-largest country by population, reliance on imported vaccines presents a critical health security risk. When the SBP launched the TERF scheme, we availed that facility to undertake a major expansion atour plant in Lahore. This expansion will allow us to produce specialty therapeutics and vaccines to the tune of up to 750 million doses a year. When Gilead’s Remdesivir was approved for Covid-19 treatment in the USA, the company completed its technology transfer to us within 12 weeks, and Remdesivir started reaching patients in Pakistan at the same time as in developed countries. It was a tremendous achievement for Pakistan and something like that needs to be replicated in areas such as vaccines. Given the right enabling environment, Pakistan’s pharmaceutical sector can act as a manufacturing and export hub for vaccines and therapeutics to serve developing countries worldwide.

BRR: is Remdesivir still being used to treat Covid patients?

OKW: It is still being used, but demand has come down significantly as the pandemic is settling. There are oral treatment options also available now.

BRR: Where does the local pharma sector stand today versus the multinational companies?

OKW: The country’s pharma industry is a complex, multi-layered industry with eight hundred plus players. I would say that the top 50manufacturersproduce world-class medication, and have the potential to scale internationally. The local market has also shifted towards local players and manufacturers from the MNCs over the last 15 years. The flipside is unfortunately that our regulatory system is entirely geared towards pricing concerns and not the quality.

BRR: Coming to regulation in the industry, how affectively in DRAP performing?

OKW: DRAP should purely focus on and be responsible for enforcing quality and making sure that drugs manufactured in Pakistan maintain international standards. Pricing on the other hand should be with ministry of commerce or industries, but not with DRAP.

BRR: What is your take on the API policy?

OKW: It is a reasonable and an encouraging policy. My view on the API production in Pakistan is that it is going to be exceedingly difficult for the country to make a place for itself as it is sandwiched between two largest producers of API: China and India. Both our neighbors have scaled up to such dramatic levels that it’s going to be incredibly challenging to compete with them. This policy suggests that API manufacturing will be done through tariff protection, which will make our finished product a little bit less competitive. We would be better served by focusing on growth in finished dosage form production, which is where most of the value-addition also lies and where we already have sufficient expertise as a country. Enable Pakistan to have at least 20 to 25 FDA approved facilities and incentivize them to compete globally.

However, I believe there are certain areas of our healthcare system, such as tuberculosis, where for public health security reasons, there is a need to be self-reliant on API production.

BRR: One way suggested to increase competitiveness of our pharma sector is increase exports; is there a potential for pharma exports?

OKW: Our latent potential for exports from pharma industry is $2 billion. It’s latent because it requires the industry to be firmly regulated for quality but deregulated for pricing. FDA approval is an expensive business, and many small players lose out on investing in quality. Pharmaceutical exports are a long game; it takes at least a couple of years to get approval in large exports markets. Through managed price deregulation coupled with strict quality enforcement in a way that works for the patients, industry and the government, exports will take off exponentially. Respite in imports will also come if we are self-sustained in vaccines.

In every country in the globe, vaccines are a public good. This means that Governments are responsible for vaccine procurement, and private markets for vaccination do not really exist. If you look at our neighbor, India has become the world’s largest vaccine producer on the strength of its government’s buyback commitments. As a recent example, Corbevax, a Covid-19 vaccine designed at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, was commercialized by Biological E. Even before the vaccine was fully produced, the manufacturer received advance orders from the Government of India for 300 Million doses, and an advance payment of Rs15 billion to help them scale up production. This kind of strategic procurement and commitment is need from the Government to make domestic vaccine production a reality in Pakistan.

BRR: What are Ferozsons Labs’ expansion plans?

OKW: One of our major investments – capacity enhancement is under process and should be ready by the end of the year, which can be used for downstream vaccine production or specialty therapeutic treatments. We are also actively seeking partnerships with major companies around the world to help expand production of drugs in developing countries. Also, with expansion of our plants coming in, we will be targeting more regulated global markets and get the certifications and necessary approvals.

Another area that we are focusing on are metabolic diseases like diabetes. Pakistan has thirty-three million diabetics, making it the third-largest population of people with diabetes in the world. We are working very actively to introduce treatments and better diagnostic tools for diabetes and heart disease, helping train physicians across the country to better diagnose the diseases earlier. Because of complications of Diabetes, close to 400,000 Pakistanis undergo amputations every year – the vast majority of which are preventable. As we know, a limb also represents a livelihood, and in many cases, the economic consequences for the family of an amputee can be devastating. We are collaborating with physicians training them to diagnose such conditions early, treating complications such as diabetic foot, and referring patients in a timely manner for interventions like angioplasty below-the-knee to prevent amputations.