The drugmaker hopes to eventually boost sales and profits of various meds in the region, part of a stepped-up emphasis on so-called emerging markets. And at the same time, Sanofi-Aventis also hopes to win kudos for widening availability of its meds in poor nations, a move also recently embraced by GlaxoSmithKline.

Patients in Indonesia and the Philippines may save up to half for such as the Lantus diabetes med and the Taxotere cancer treatment, Jean-Louis Grunwald, Sanofi’s Southeast Asia head, tells Bloomberg News, adding that the program will be expanded to other countries in the region. “Answering this need is a must. Our capability to solve this access issue, together with other stakeholders, will define the success of our organization in this part of the world in the years to come…I’m not naive. Our initiative has to be sustainable. We cannot do it at cost.”

“In some cases very heavy discounting has been seen as commercial suicide, but yet sales volumes doubled or trebled as a consequence,” Mark Clark, a Deutsche Bank analyst, tells Bloomberg. “There have been concrete examples of a massive uptick in volumes in what appeared to be on the face of it a pretty significant price cut.”

“As drug bills get larger and as governments get more sophisticated in provision of health care, ultimately the likelihood of government interference grows,” he adds, noting that while adding that Sanofi gets about 26 percent of sales from emerging markets. “Emerging markets are in general a good thing but I don’t think they’re the panacea for all the industry’s woes.”

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