LAHORE: The Pakistan Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (PPMA) has stressed the need to update existing drug laws in line with global trends in the larger interest of the patients and the pharma industry.
“Local industries are closing down due to historic high input cost, highest inflation, and bank mark-up rates in Asia. Multinationals are disappearing due to excessive regulations. Now only four MNCs are operating in the country, which too, are reporting high losses. Patients are the ultimate sufferers under the situation going from bad to worse”, PPMA chairman Mian Khalid Misbah said in a statement.
He emphasized the need for timely government intervention to save the pharma industry and provide relief to the ailing humanity in the country.
“World has moved forward and we are still where we were decades ago. India is determining prices of 384 medicines mentioned in the WHO’s essential drug list. Bangladesh has gone even one step further by regulating only 117 drugs. Rest are left to the market forces. Availability of medicines is better in these countries and that too at a comparatively low prices due to open competition”, he pointed out.
The PPMA chief said that these countries were earning billions of dollars in foreign exchange through exports, saying drugs export of India was more than $28 billion annually.
He was of the strong opinion that Federal Government has taken a big step by deregulating prices of non-essential drugs and this will provide much needed oxygen for survival of the local industry and attract investment in the sector but much more needs to be done to bring the pharma sector regulations up to mark of neighbouring countries and make it an attractive market for investment.
“Inordinate delays in fixing/revising prices of hundreds of essential drugs have caused severe shortage. For example, delay in hardship price revision of Tegral (medicine for seizures) resulted in it being sold at Rs3,000 or more which is 4 times the proposed revised price! “Such long unnecessary delays result in counterfeit and smuggled medicines to enter the market and patients pay the worst.
