Glen Godresse is Chief Executive Officer at Menarini Asia-Pacific.
While specialty care may attract more public attention due to associations with greater unmet medical needs, complexity and innovative treatments, along with typically higher prices, the lynchpin of personal healthcare for the vast majority of people remains their primary care practice or family physician. It is the first port of call for most patients, especially for managing chronic diseases, and forms the foundation of any effective and efficient healthcare system.
An effective primary care infrastructure is critical for patients to access doctors easily, be screened effectively, receive education about their conditions and have their care managed, both through lifestyle interventions and medication. In Asia Pacific (APAC), where many areas are undergoing economic development, we view primary care as the backbone for early diagnosis and chronic disease management in these communities.
However, over the past decade, many multinational pharma companies have been shifting their focus toward specialty care, meaning conditions primarily treated by specialist doctors, rather than general practitioners. This is particularly true in areas such as oncology and immunology, where many pharma companies perceive a higher unmet scientific need.
Consequently, our organization is doubling down on primary care—because we see it as an area where significant scale, need and long-term patient value lie. In fact, the vast majority of our APAC business is currently rooted in primary care, which we’ve built deliberately through what we call our “glocalised” approach. Our strategy in the region, where no two markets look the same, is intentionally built on local patient needs, long-term partnerships, and market-fit primary care portfolios. While we continue to invest and grow in consumer and specialty care, where we believe scientific advancements are crucial, we see primary care as core to both commercial sustainability and delivering real impact in a region facing rising chronic disease and stretched health systems.
The True Strength of Primary Care
If you look at primary care conditions (meaning those most commonly treated by general practitioners, such as hypertension, allergies, high cholesterol (lipids) and diabetes), you’d see that, scientifically—and as an industry—we’ve made major advancements. Take cholesterol-lowering, for example. Fifty years ago, statins didn’t exist; today, the right combination of medications can easily cut cholesterol levels by more than half. Hypertension is also very well controlled with existing treatments.
However, despite these scientific advancements, the disease burden in high-prevalence regions, such as APAC, has not declined as much as expected. In other words, scientific advancements do not always translate into improved health outcomes. That’s largely due to factors like low patient awareness, poor education, underdiagnosis, low treatment rates and poor adherence to treatment. These are all areas where a primary care doctor would be the first line of defence and where pharma companies can partner to improve ‘real world’ health outcomes for patients.
Unless we keep investing in primary care beyond just developing medications, we won’t deliver the impact that really matters, reducing the burden of chronic disease in our communities. That’s why it’s so critical that the industry does not “drop the ball” on primary care. There’s still a huge amount of work to be done, especially in APAC and developing regions, beyond the science itself.
An Important Shift in Focus
We firmly believe that primary care is key to shifting the burden of disease across APAC. Despite scientific advances, we still see millions of avoidable deaths each year from chronic disease. There’s a significant patient opportunity, an undeniable competitive advantage, and— as we see it—a public health imperative to renew focus on primary care.
The data speaks for itself. Cardiovascular disease remains the region’s leading cause of death, accounting for 40% of all deaths in the Western Pacific Region and nearly a quarter of deaths in the South-East Asia Region in 2021. A 2024 Lancet study forecasts that this burden will rise steeply by 2050, driven by metabolic risk factors such as high BMI, elevated blood glucose and kidney dysfunction. In Singapore, 1 in 2 women are affected by iron deficiency—yet the condition remains widely underdiagnosed. These are all conditions that can be managed mainly in primary care, not hospitals, making it the centre point where real change begins.
Rethinking Primary Care
To maximise the effectiveness of primary care as the first line of defence demands a collaborative effort from pharma, the medical community, policymakers and, of course, patients themselves.
Governments are taking steps in the right direction. In markets like Singapore, policy is shifting to prioritize community-based care over hospital-first models. That makes pharma’s role twofold: to deliver innovative medicines and to help frontline providers adapt—through support with diagnostics, disease education, patient support tools and “real-world” evidence generation, especially how treatments may perform across diverse, multi-ethnic populations in APAC. The value we aim to bring isn’t just in the product; it’s in supporting systems to work better at scale, despite the challenges and constraints that the region’s healthcare systems face.
This is not to understate the importance of scientific innovation in specialty care. There’s a clear and urgent need there, and it remains important to channel investment into this area. But it’s only one part of the solution. To truly deliver outcomes that matter, sustained investments must be made in local clinical trials, practitioner education and digital tools—each designed to support earlier diagnosis and stronger long-term disease management in primary care. The need is growing, and so must long-term commitment.
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