LAHORE – Stakeholders in healthcare services, including representatives of doctors, pharmacists, NGOs as well as politicians, have urged the government to change its budget priorities and allocate more funds for public health.
A meeting of the stakeholders held here on Wednesday demanded the government cut non-development expenses and refuse repayment of foreign debts and the funds thus spared should be diverted towards the public health and education system.
They also opposed any form of privatization of the health system and instead sought building of more new hospitals, medical colleges and nursing schools to meet healthcare requirements of the growing population.
The participants also demanded that medicines must be marketed under generic names instead of branded products to reduce their prices as well as curbing the malpractice of big pharma companies which bribe medical professionals through sponsored foreign family trips and expensive gifts on meeting certain medicine sale targets.
They believed that the step would also improve the quality of the medicines as well as reduce their prices.
Those who joined the meeting organized by Labour Education Foundation included Dr Tehsin Azhar from the Pakistan Medical Association, Dr Kalimullah from Pakistan Pharmacists Association, Mohsin Khan from the Punjab Druggists Association, Muhammad Usman from Young Pharmacists’ Association, ruling PML-N leader chairman of Soch (a think-tank) Muhammad Mehdi, Haqooq-e-Khalq Party leader Farooq Tariq, alternative medicine industry representative Haji Younas and pharma industry employees union secretary Syed Shabbir Hussain.
They demanded that the medical practitioners should be made to prescribe only generic medicines instead of ‘branded’ ones, while making bio-equivalence tests of medicines compulsory to break the myth that pharmaceutical corporations are producing better medicines.
They called for enhancing the public health budget up to 6% of GDP and sensitizing lawmakers on healthcare rights, benefits of producing generic medicines, ill-impacts of pharma monopolies and making healthcare laws effective with proper implementation.
They felt a lack of coordination between the body that governs health education sector and the one which regulates registration of medicines costing healthcare seekers heavily, and demanded a ban on private practice by medical practitioners who are in the service of government.
The stakeholders urged the need for raising awareness among the people on how to prevent diseases to prepare them for future health challenges, incentivizing population control to lessen burden on existing health facilities, and increasing the number of filter clinics/disease screening centres to lessen pressure on tertiary care hospitals.
They advocated for giving priority to allocations for Research & Development – not only for developing better medicines & vaccines but also to diagnose which segment of society develops what kind of diseases, while subsidizing raw material import for producing affordable medicines.
