SHC terms hepatitis drug's purchase process illegal

A single-member bench of the Sindh High Court (SHC), comprising Justice Mohammad Shafi Siddiqui, through an order on Thursday overthrew the decision by the provincial health authorities to purchase costly hepatitis drug from two multinational companies (MNCs).
The bench acknowledging that this was depriving local pharma companies of level-playing ground scraped tender to buy costly hepatitis medicine from MNCs.
Justice Mohammad Shafi Siddiqui who had reserved the judgement on March 6, announcing the same on Thursday, termed the process of purchase of medicine illegal, unlawful and without legal grounds; scrapping the tender issued for purchase of medicine worth Rs 250 million.
The detailed judgement came on a petition filed by various local pharmaceutical firms against the rejection of their products used for the treatment of Hepatitis B and C.
Earlier, the court had rejected the plea by the health department for partial purchase of hepatitis medicine from multinationals on the grounds that the court was hearing the case on priority basis, therefore limited purchase could not be allowed.
The health authorities had pleaded to relax the stay order on the purchase of injection so that 25 percent of medicine costing around Rs 60.2 million could be bought for 33,000 patients, of whom some 1,800 were at terminal stage.
Advocates Faisal Siddiqui, Shahid Memon and Abdus Sattar Pirzada, the counsel for the petitioners, told the court that the government was playing games with mala fide intentions to benefit certain influential, causing great losses to public exchequer and interest of poor hepatitis patients.
They questioned as to why many leading health institutions including the government of Balochistan and the government of AJK had been purchasing and using the locally produced medicines for decades with no complaints, if they were harmful to human health.
The counsel further argued that the government had issued licences to the local national pharmaceutical firms to produce the drug, allowing it to sell the medicine in local market as well as to export it.