PM urged to sign summaries for drug prices

KARACHI: Pakistan Pharmaceutical Manufacturers’ Association (PPMA) on Wednesday urged the prime minister to sign the summaries sent by the Drug Pricing Committee last year, as critically ill patients have been suffering owing to his indecision.

PPMA central chairman Dr Kaiser Waheed along with key office-holders of the association made this demand while addressing a press conference.

“This is our last resort to request the prime minister to sign these summaries, otherwise there would be no respite for patients suffering from acute ailments like Hepatitis C or renal failure, as some 100 important medicines are short in the local market due to delay in approval of Drug Pricing Committee’s recommendations sent last year,” Dr Waheed said. The PPMA central chairman said such matters should have been dealt at the level of the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (Drap) without being sent to the ministerial level and later to the PM House.

Dr Waheed said production and availability of a number of essential medicines, life-saving drugs, new and orphan molecules in Pakistani market had been severely affected due to the PM’s indecision.

For instance Hepatitis C patients in Pakistan have yet to get access to Daclatasvir, a tablet, which helps treat patients suffering from this disease that was earlier considered incurable.

He said a few months back a delegation of the PPMA had met President Mamnoon Hussain and urged him to play his role in this regard, but he too expressed his helplessness.

We should keep in mind that medicine producers are commercial and business institutions, and they cannot manufacture medicines on a large scale without taking commercial viability into account,” he said.

Dr Waheed also raised the issue that an undue and illegal system of “panel inspection” had been imposed on the pharma industry, which used to apply to the registration board of Drap for introduction of any new medicines in the Pakistani market.

He said systems like panel inspection would only delay manufacturing and introduction of new medicines in the Pakistani market, because those who were part of the panel inspection teams had no idea about good manufacturing practices of the pharma industry. Moreover, he said barcode system was being introduced for selling medicines in Pakistan, which would be futile as shopkeepers sold tablets on patient demand instead of selling the whole blister pack.

He said billions of rupees were lying unused in the Central Research Fund maintained by the Health Ministry, while the pharmaceutical companies have been contributing one percent of their gross profits towards this fund since 1976 for research and development of new medicines.