LAHORE: The Young Pharmacists Association (YPA) on Thursday held a protest rally against high prices of hepatitis medicines outside the Lahore Press Club in connection with the World Hepatitis Day. YPA general secretary Haroon Yousaf and another young pharmacist, Noor Muhammad Mahar, said, “More than 20 million people are infected with hepatitis in Pakistan and almost 4,000 patients are being ‘killed’ without any treatment despite the fact that a number of oral treatments have been discovered world over but they are unavailable in Pakistan. They said the Federal Health Ministry and the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) took three years to officially register a hepatitis medicine in Pakistan named Sofosbuvir. “Still the price of the medicine is very high, although with the efforts of media and the YPA, the price of Sofosbuvir has been reduced many folds. One of the leading companies has supplied a tablet of Sofosbuvir along with Ribavirin at Rs 49.93 to the Punjab government, but the Health Ministry Health and the DRAP have failed to fix the price at Rs 49.93 per tablet.” They added, “We cannot understand that whether the Health Ministry and the drug regulatory body are working for the ‘Club of 50’ – a group of large pharmaceutical companies – or they are committed to providing masses some relief.” “The officials of the DRAP and the Health Ministry are deceiving not only the courts and the parliament but also the nation by making false claims that they are providing cheapest hepatitis medicines in Pakistan,” they alleged. They urged the chief justice of Pakistan, Prime Minister Nawaz Shairf and President Mamnoon to make sure availability of all hepatitis medicines within 15 days at economical rates. It was also urged to reduce the price Sofosbuvir to Rs 49 per tablet for patients and recover all the looted money from pharmaceutical companies. “The case must be investigated by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) or a judicial commission as hundreds of thousands of poor patients have died due to expensive and unavailability of hepatitis medicine,” they demanded.