The Ministry of Health has stopped registration of around 4,000 medicines following allegations that rules were being violated in the absence of a proper monitoring mechanism. During question hour session in the National Assembly on Monday, Parliamentary Secretary, Health, Dr Mahreen said that the number of such registered medicines had been incorrectly reported as 4,000.
"However, the actual figure is much less. In routine, the medicines are duly registered under the relevant act after completion of the relevant paper work. Then the names of the proposed medicines are presented before the relevant board/ advisory committee for approval," she said. The National Assembly and Senate Standing Committees on Health also discussed the issue threadbare.
"Though, we cannot cancel drugs already registered, we have stopped the registration process. These medicines are not yet registered with the Ministry of Health. The process of registration of such medicines has been suspended," she said. Hanif Abbasi of Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) said that it was astonishing to note that 4,000 medicines had been simultaneously registered with the Ministry of Health. This showed that something was wrong with the Ministry, which could give permission of registration of such a large number of medicines at one time, he added.
The Parliamentary Secretary for Health strongly responded, saying that the figure had been exaggerated, which was not correct. In a written reply, Minister for Health Mir Aijaz Hussain Jakhrani said that the prices of certain drugs had been revised on case to case basis by the Price Advisory Committee of the Ministry of Health, considering hardship cases/anomaly cases.
"There is a list of 136 drugs/molecules for which the price increase has been allowed in during the current year, along with their previous prices. The prices of more than 30 (out of 136) molecules/drugs were adjusted close to the level of ceiling prices," he said.
Since last year, a number of hardship cases had been coming up in the wake of rising raw material costs, coupled with increase in the cost of imported items due to devaluation of rupee against the US dollar and Euro. Thus the adjustment of prices in these hardship cases became necessary to ensure continuous availability of these drugs in the market and to avoid hardship to the public. He said the Ministry of Health had been continuously absorbing the pressure for the increase of prices since then.
Following factors badly affected the manufacturing costs, including devaluation of Pak rupee during 2001-09 against US Dollar and Euro., cumulative inflation during 2002-09, increase in prices of raw materials, increase in process of packing materials, increase in energy cost, increase in labour cost and increase in transportation cost, the Health Minister added.
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