• Federal cabinet yet to decide on proposals despite Drap recommending price revisions for 105 hardship-category medicines over two years ago• Prolonged shortages creating opportunities for illegal suppliers to fill the gap, chemists’ body warns
KARACHI: The prolonged shortage of more than 100 essential medicines, including life-saving drugs for cancer, heart disease and other serious illnesses, has created space for counterfeit and substandard products, as the federal government continues to delay, for more than two years, a decision on revising prices that manufacturers say no longer cover production costs, market sources and officials said on Friday.
At the heart of the crisis, they said, was the prolonged delay in deciding the prices of essential medicines.
More than two years after the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (Drap) recommended price revisions for 105 hardship-category medicines, the federal government has yet to approve the proposals.
Drap’s drug pricing committee concluded that the rising costs of imported raw materials, energy, packaging, transportation, labour, financing and currency depreciation had made the production of many essential medicines commercially unviable.
