Rare-disease patients face uphill struggle

Slow approvals and stratospheric costs can keep effective drugs out of reach in Hong Kong, as Wang Yuke reports.

Experts are putting pressure on the government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region to allow speedy approval of medications that could keep about 7,500 people in the city with rare diseases alive.

The box office hit Dying to Survive, which opened in cinemas on the Chinese mainland last month, helped put the issue of accessibility to medicine and treatment for patients with rare diseases back on the table. The film is based on the true story of a Chinese patient with chronic granulocytic leukemia who smuggled cheap cancer medicine from India for 1,000 other people with the disease, which is linked to a genetic abnormality.