Chairing a meeting to review the pace of implementation of Health Sector Reforms Programme aimed at making quality medicines available to the people, Punjab Caretaker Chief Minister Ejaz Nisar is reported to have ordered sweeping action against unscrupulous traders found indulging in indiscriminate sale of spurious drugs.
Ejaz Nisar is stated to have directed the concerned officials to improve the system of monitoring of efficiency of the drug inspectors. The stipulation should appeal to reason for the simple fact that there has been no indication of a let-up in the growth of trading in fake medicines despite similar warnings from the government over the past several years in a row.
However, now that the effort seems to have been based on objective comprehension of the factors at work against the fulfilment of the policy objective, one may hope that this time it would yield desired results to whatever extent possible.
This has reference to the Chief Minister's stress on proper evaluation of the efficiency of drug inspectors who have no insignificant a role in correcting the market behaviour from time to time. It will thus appear that previous efforts in the same direction had failed due, among other things, to the conceptual vacuum in which they were contemplated.
However, as the urge for elimination of trading in spurious drugs was emphasised in a special meeting held to review the pace of implementation of the Health Sector Reforms Programme by a caretaker government, the indication of an objective comprehension of the problem appears to have been very much there.
It was some three years ago, when speaking at the swearing-in ceremony of office-bearers of Pakistan Medical Association, Punjab, in Lahore, the then Federal Minister for Health, Muhammad Naseer Khan, had given the happy tidings of early launch of a long elusive campaign against spurious drugs and quackery.
Commenting on this event in these columns, we had also stated that his heart-warming observations must have come as a breath of fresh air to many in a dangerously suffocating situation caused by the twin menace of drug faking and fraudulent medical practices.
At the same time we had referred to the twin evils making an ominous combination to wreak havoc on increasing number of men, women and children, particularly in the remote rural areas thickly populated by the poor and the illiterate segments of the society.
That the situation has remained unchanged since then, would leave little to doubt from the policy expounded by the Caretaker Chief Minister to rid the society of widespread manufacturing and sale of spurious medicines.
It will also be noted that by now it has become a stupendous task to bring an end to business malpractice's, so much so that elected governments find it difficult to implement even the most desirable measures of popular appeal because of pressures from the related mafia groups in key segments of economy.
This is not to say that the elected governments necessarily lack in awareness of what has gone wrong with the system and how best to correct it, but somehow they have to turn a blind eye to the violation of strict regulations evolved to reform the ugly situation.
One can only hope and pray that the initiative now undertaken will be pursued in right earnest in a befitting manner not only in Punjab but in other provinces as well with the needed backing of the federal government.