ISLAMABAD – Ministry of Health Services Secretary Ayub Shaikh has said the pharmaceutical companies were making unjustified billions at the expense of public.
Briefing Senate Standing Committee on National Health Services during a meeting here on Thursday, he said, “These companies would be looting billions from public with uncalled for increase in prices.” The secretary said the pharmaceutical companies were giving wrong information in a drug prices case before the Sindh High Court (SHC).
He said the drug companies were misleading public by stating that medicine prices were lower in Pakistan than in India. He said it was also false that these companies did not increase prices of their products for the last 13 years. The companies were hiking prices by submitting hardship cases to Drug Regulation Authority of Pakistan (DRAP), he said.
He said the prices should increase only on case to case basis. “It is a wrong culture to increase the prices across the board without taking into account decrease in input costs.”
State Minister for Health Services Saira Afzal Tarar said recommendation of the committee that the federal government should buy medicines from pharmaceutical companies and then sell them at controlled rate was not feasible.
She said large scale buying of drugs by government was not done anywhere in the world and the Pakistan government could not have such resources to create a whole new set up for this purpose. She said the Ministry of Health Services secretary, DRAP CEO and Costing and Pricing director had held detailed meetings with the additional attorney general to brief him about facts of the cases before SHC.
The ministry plans to file application and counter affidavit before the SHC for earlier hearing, clubbing of all cases and vacating of stay orders obtained by companies. The SHC has set March 17 as the next date of hearing.
Senator Ateeq Sheikh and Senator Kalsoom Perveen criticized unjustified increase in prices by the drug companies and called for strict scrutiny of functioning of the pharma sector. Senator Sajjad Turi decided to hold next meeting on drug prices in presence of representatives of pharmaceutical companies in an effort to find some solution.
DRAP CEO Dr Aslam said not a single case of companies for price determination was pending. However, 6000 hardship cases were pending and the companies need to provide verified invoices and audited accounts to justify their plea for increase in prices of medicines.
On query from Senator Nauman Wazir Khattak, Dr Aslam informed that the DRAP was taking steps to upgrade its drug testing laboratories in cooperation with World Health Organisation and United States Pharmacopeia, a non-profit organisation working to raise standards of public health.
