ISLAMABAD – The federal government recently deregulated the prices of drugs. As a result, the prices of 146 life-saving medicines listed in the National Essential Medicine List (NEML) have increased.
These drugs were categorized as “hardship cases” because pharmaceutical companies stopped manufacturing them due to financial unviability, said sources on Wednesday.
The Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) recommended an increase in the prices of 262 medicines about two years ago. However, the government enhanced the costs of 146 drugs, including MMR and typhoid vaccines, oral antibiotics and the ones used for anaesthesia and treating cancer, inflammation, cardiovascular diseases, fungal illness, allergies, diabetes and epilepsy.
The pharmaceutical companies can revise the prices of the remaining 116 medicines on their own after the government deregulated the subject. Now, the government will regulate the prices of only 498 drugs mentioned in the NEML.
Pharma industry people and healthcare professionals have expressed different views on the government’s move to deregulation the prices of drugs and increase the prices of essential medicines. Pharma people believe that the move will help overcome the shortage of drugs and ensure their easy availability for the ailing humanity. They also supported the increase in the prices of drugs on the essential medicines list, saying that the notification had been pending for years and these medicines were not available in the market due to much higher input costs than the approved retail price.
Healthcare professionals believe that deregulating drug prices would put the ailing humanity at the mercy of pharmaceutical companies. On the other hand, increasing the costs of drugs on the essential medicines list under the pretext of hardship cases would only add to the miseries of inflation hit people.
