Menacing hike in drug prices

It is no doubt riddling to watch that while there are occasional drives to rein in price hikes of commodities, especially consumer commodities of daily necessities, the entire arena of drugs and medicines seems to be beyond the ambit of any effective state intervention.

Although ideally, the government is supposed to ensure the pricing of drugs manufactured by local pharmaceutical companies, the authorities are apparently listless to the spiraling of prices in the domestic market in utter negligence to protect the interests of the people at large. In common parlance, drugs generally consumed for a host of common ailments are called ‘essential drugs’ requiring intervention by the state to ensure reasonable pricing and strict compliance by the manufacturers and retailers. It is here in recognizing the importance of mass consumption in curing ailments that prices of drugs dubbed as ‘essential’ should have been under strict surveillance. Besides, it is not understood why the pricing of the whole range of drugs and medicines, irrespective of whether they are being essential or not, should not be under some form of effective government control and enforcement.

It has come out in a recent report published in a local daily that the government has no control whatsoever on as much as 90 percent of the drugs manufactured and sold domestically. The pharmaceutical companies, as the report said, have raised prices of their drugs as many as three times in 2013. All concerned people including healthcare experts are of the opinion that this reckless hike in prices is due mainly to the absence of required amendments to the drug policy to list out the products and frame rules to be followed for compliance as well as for enforcement by the relevant government authority. It is being alleged that the government is under pressure to delay the finalization of the policy in this regard. Reportedly a draft policy is currently awaiting approval from the Ministry of Health for around a year.

What actually makes one curious about medicinal drugs is the vagueness often resorted to while defining which are the essential ones and which, are not. The list of essential drugs in Bangladesh, as the report pointed out, includes only 209 varieties of drugs, but according to the World Health Organisation’s classification, the list includes 348.

Ideally, it is the Department of drug administration which is to ensure or enforces control over the prices of not only the so-called essential drugs but also all drugs and medicines produced in the country. Drug Control Ordinance 1982 stipulates that ‘the government may, by notification in the official gazette, fix the maximum price at which any medicine may be sold’ and ‘any pharmaceutical raw material may be imported or sold’ (Section 11).

According to drug experts, the country presently produces more than 1,300 generic drugs, of which the government ‘supposedly’ controls prices of only 117 – those on the list of essential drugs. Surprising as it may seem, the drug administration authority is reportedly not allowed to intervene in controlling the prices of the rest of the drugs except the aforementioned 117. Besides the price-hikes, another disturbing aspect of drugs is the influx of spurious products of all hues into the country’s drug market. One only hopes the Department of drug administration sits up to arrest the growing menace. (Source: The Financial Express)

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