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Luke Thomas: How biosimilars Can be a Part of the Solution to Improving Survival Rates in Low- to Middle-Income Countries?

Luke Thomas/LinkedIn

Jul 14, 2025, 11:45

Luke Thomas: How biosimilars Can be a Part of the Solution to Improving Survival Rates in Low- to Middle-Income Countries?

Luke Thomas, Chief Executive Officer at World Child Cancer, shared a post on LinkedIn:

“Ineffective cancer treatments are effectively a death sentence for children with cancer. It is not medicine. It is false hope in a blister pack.

For anyone involved in the world of cancer treatment, the results of this investigation from The Bureau of Investigative Journalism will – sadly – come as little surprise. This issue affects every country where World Child Cancer operates, and in Ghana last year a pharmacist referred to it as “The Africa Tax”.

Safe and effective generics and biosimilars are an important part of the solution to improving survival rates in low- to middle-income countries and there are many excelllent companies working in this field. We are proud to work with companies across the spectrum from originators to generics/biosimilar manufacturers and distributors who produce life-saving medicines.

But there are also unscrupulous companies operating in countries with little regulatory oversight, producing ineffective or dangerous treatments. When lower-income countries are looking for affordable suppliers of essential children’s cancer medicines it is extremely hard to distinguish between the quality providers and the bad actors.

We urgently need an easily accessible, reliable list of all generic/biosimilar cancer treatments that have been independently tested. Governments in low- and middle-income countries can then make informed choices, the junk medicine producers can be run out of business, and children can survive treatment to live long, healthy lives. It just needs funding and the will to do it.

Read further.”

Manette le Grange, Corporate Social Responsibility: Childhood Cancer at Servier, shared a post by Luke Thomas, adding:

“Thank you to the researchers for highlighting this incredibly important global problem.”