Health Secretary Esperanza Cabral said the government will announce a second list of drug-price cuts in two weeks to reduce health-care costs in a nation where more than 40 percent of people live on $2 a day.

“There are medicines in all therapeutic classes that are expensive and if possible we’d like prices of these drugs to go down,” Cabral, who took the position this month, said in an interview.
“We will be happy to provide a list as soon as we have list of drug prices on voluntary price reduction in one or two weeks,” she said.

Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline Plc are among the drugmakers that the Philippines is asking to cut prices for the second time in five months. Pfizer’s Lipitor cholesterol pill and Norvasc blood pressure treatment, as well as Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.’s Plavix blood thinner, are three of the 21 medicines whose prices were reduced by half in the first round last year.

Drugmakers volunteered to lower the prices for 16 medicines in the previous round of cuts. President Gloria Arroyo invoked her authority to set price caps for five others, all from Pfizer, under a law passed in 2008 aimed at improving accessibility of medicines for the poor.