The Prime Minister should immediately act to bring down the medicine prices in the country to ensure their availability to underprivileged people who have been facing acute problems in getting access to quality health care services.
This was one of the consensus demand by the speakers who addressed the 4th Pakistan Healthcare Summit-2021 organised by Consumers’ Association of Pakistan (CAP) here at a hotel, according to a statement issued on Sunday.
The speakers demanded the government to immediately intervene to curtail the prices of life-saving drugs in the country so that they could be purchased by the patients belonging to middle and lower income groups.
They said the medicine prices should be slashed keeping in view skyrocketing inflation in the country owing to which, people had a hard time finding quality health care services.
They demanded strict enforcement of the recently issued code of ethics of Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) to regulate relations between the pharmaceutical companies and doctors so not to incentivize the practice of prescribing medicines to the patients.
They said the drug manufacturers should be taken to task by the government in accordance with the newly notified rules of the DRAP for offering undue favours to the doctors for prescribing to their patients the medicines produced by these companies.
They urged the medical practitioners to fully adhere to the general code of ethics of their profession to make sure that every ailing citizen in the country got access to the best health treatment services in an honourable way.
The speakers, most of whom were associated with the health profession, also demanded the government to readily issue health insurance cards in Sindh to treat underprivileged patients who had no other means to get access to quality health care services.
