The High Court on Monday ordered the concerned authorities to stop marketing of substandard drugs of 20 pharmaceutical companies and antibiotics of 14 others and withdraw those drugs from the markets. These are potential danger to public health and the pharmaceutical companies must stop their production and distribution in the market. We know that the producers were also asked several times in the past but the production and distribution continued. Many wonder why the public health authorities failed to carry out previous instructions while suspecting that some vested interest quarters were blocking the move. But this time we may rightly expect that the High Court order would be fully carried out to protect patients from using harmful drugs. The substandard quality of these drugs is not unknown to physicians but a kind of nexus is at work between pharmaceutical companies, their sales agents and physicians while patients remain vulnerable to serious risks. We hope that the concerned health authorities must use all power to force the faulty companies to immediately close their shutters and production of substandard drugs along with withdrawing poor drugs from the market. Some companies resorted to dishonest practice and the health risk from their substandard medicine took an alarming turn in recent past. Health experts became vocal and even the Parliamentary Standing Committee on the Ministry of Health took the issue seriously asking for banning those pharmaceutical firms and their substandard products. But the Health Ministry could not be nudged into action. The ministry functionaries are active in pursuit of monetary gains. Meanwhile public interest litigation was filed at the High Court; which passed the order to ban the firms and their products. As it appears there are around 265 pharmaceutical companies in Bangladesh and many of them are not complying with Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) in the industry. In 2009, the government initiated a move to upgrade the existing laws governing the pharmaceutical industry. But vested interest groups used political shelter so far and earned handsome income by marketing poor quality drugs. We know that Bangladesh is exporting drugs to many countries and it is feared that bad drugs might even destroy the market of good drugs. So the High Court order must be implemented immediately to protect public health and exports from any setback.
