Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: As the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) has failed to implement the drug pricing policy, pharmaceutical companies have sought court’s intervention to set things right – currently over 50 petitions have been filed in the Sindh High Court on pricing and other issues.

The government has been continuously pressuring the DRAP ignoring plethora of problems related to public health and pharmaceutical industry as unviable under-priced drugs are vanishing from the market; thus the companies are knocking at the court doors, said Intazar Mahdi, general secretary, The Law Society.

“The judiciary has to play an active role in setting things right due to complete failure of the DRAP in implementing a formula for drug prices,’ said Mahdi.

“The Ministry of National Health Service’s hierarchy lacks knowledge and expertise of the sector and is crippled with working inefficiencies. Thus, in reality, the government has created yet another layer of bureaucracy to control the DRAP and all meaningful breakthroughs in the pricing crisis so far were made possible after courts’ intervention,” he added.

“Since the last decade and-a-half, pharmaceutical manufacturing cost has gone sky-high. From energy resources to basic recipes ingredients, inputs cost has gone out of proportion,” he said, adding that fuel prices has risen by 290% and still 100% higher than 2000, utilities gone up by 350%, minimum wages increased by more than 100% and Pak currency lost more than 100% value against US dollar. On the other hand, more than 80% medicines were not allowed to adjust prices for 15 years and after 15 years, increase of 2.5 percent was given, except 622 hardship cases which got meagre price adjustments.”

Even after passage of 15 years, the government is playing politics on drugs price adjustment, which has compelled companies to move courts. “It is completely unexplainable why the DRAP is not coming up with a transparent pricing policy which will be beneficial for both industry and patients,” he argued.

The government is ignoring the fact that the prevalent crisis is affecting patients due to shortage of genuine drugs; thus making way for substandard quality and counterfeit drugs in the market, he highlighted.

“Due to strict price control on all 80,000 products, the industry is forced to shrink its manufacturing options and many of them have even stopped the production of many important life-saving drugs. Acute shortage of anti TB drugs and essential drugs required during delivery are some of the examples,” said another source in the industry.

It is pertinent to note that in response to the industry’s appeal to the Sindh High Court in 2014, the DRAP assured the court that it would reconsider prices of all drugs, particularly promising to review the hardship cases on the priority basis. A 9-month time was agreed before the court to do so, failing which the pharmaceutical companies were allowed to an automatic increase in the drugs prices.

However, the DRAP did not review the price of even a single drug during that period despite numerous meetings, thus the manufacturers raised the prices as per the agreed policy which spun the otherwise silent DRAP into action and the government withheld the drugs price-rise to which the industry again had to move the court as of late – earlier this year the Sindh High Court stopped the government from taking any action against the drugs manufacturers.

However, the DRAP still lacks implementation of its pricing policies, especially regarding the hardship cases and the latest to suffer are expecting mothers as life saving drugs used in childbirth are in short supply.

This is high time the government should make it a priority to instruct the DRAP to implement the drug pricing policy in letter and spirit not only to avert the looming health crisis, but also to save employments of many in the ailing pharmaceutical industry.