Daily Times

KARACHI: Addressing the medical symposium of JPMC on Ethics in the Pharma and Healthcare, Pharma Bureau chairman Arshad Hussain has urged the government to ensure provision of quality medicines to the patients across the country.

Arshad said that research-based multinational pharmaceutical companies are following the same standards that they are following around the world. He said in the past seven years, the pharmaceutical investment was in excess of $0.5 billion, which is now declining. At present each company with a manufacturing facility invests roughly $3.2 million per annum towards maintaining cGMP standards, he added.

Delivering his keynote on the occasion of 51 annual medical symposium, he said that there will be no future of healthcare if there are no ethics in this field. “Ethics form the foundation of healthcare provision, whether it is the services, consultation, medicines or any other aspect, if we are not true, transparent and fully compliant in our dealings with patients, physicians, healthcare providers and all other stakeholders, we will never be able to ensure ethics in this field.

He said that all multinational pharmaceutical companies operating in Pakistan and member of the Pharma Bureau follow the highest medical quality and ethical standards in Pakistan. “Not only our manufacturing plants are cGMP compliant, our commercial practices are in line with international codes of conduct followed globally,” he remarked. “Our commitment is to maintain the highest ethical standards in the research-based pharma industry in our dealing with all external stakeholders including healthcare professionals,” he observed.

It is to be noted that Pakistan is among the world’s 35 countries where local medicines meet 90 percent of local demand. The market size of pharmaceutical industry in the country is $2.2billion and it is highly regulated industry with highly educated manpower.