The Federal Government's drug registration board is a strange organisation. While it deals with registration of medicines in Pakistan it is totally devoid of the relevant technical expertise.
There are all sorts of directors in it but hardly any representation of each speciality of medicine, surgery and gynaecology.
There is no representation of general practitioners or doctors from the private sector who do more than 80% of the legal prescribing. As a result of this, several life saving drugs are not registered in Pakistan.
For example the world famous drug Viagra or its generics are not registered after so many years even though it is also used for primary pulmonary hypertension and in blue babies, cases where it is regarded as a life-saving drug and is truly essential.
So, perennially negligent is the Federal Health Ministry about the health of the people that often the allopathic medicines are sold in cosmetic categories and hence are not monitored.
Similarly, homeopathic medicines with allopathic ingredients are not supervised. Despite paper regulations ordinary medium-sized chemist shops have their own generic drugs registered and they are not required to pay and cannot pay if any side-effects occur in the recipients of their concoctions. The height of the health ministry's lassez faire attitude is its recent directive which has asked the pharmaceutical manufacturers to reduce the number of brands "voluntarily". About time something is done about it.
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