PRICES of essential drugs have shot up at astronomical height, as government has no control over the prices of commonly used drugs for treatment in the country. Report by a leading daily on Tuesday shows absence of government monitoring over about 96 percent of basic drugs is allowing pharmaceutical companies to recklessly increase drug prices on high profiteering motive. Many companies are also producing substandard drugs unchecked and cheating the patients.
The Drug Law of 1982 clearly stipulates that the authorities concerned should have annual update of drug prices while monitoring the quality of drugs and their prices. But such practice is reportedly missing for the last 22 years. It invariably shows utter neglect of the controlling authorities or that they have compromised the application of the law for material gains. Meanwhile the prices of essential medicines have gone beyond the affordability of common people in absence of regulatory measures in the market. It can’t be acceptable at all.
Pharmaceutical companies in Bangladesh are producing 2,833 generic drugs at a time when the government reportedly controls prices of only 117 medicines from a list of commonly used drugs. But such control also seems to be much on paper only. What appears quite ironic in recent time is that despite Bangladesh being a leading drug producing country, most people are failing to buy basic drug here for being exorbitantly costly. According to World Health Organization findings, about 65 lakh people in Bangladesh spend everything they have to become poor every year due to meeting treatment expenditure where the cost of medicine figures out prominently. Here the most serious allegation is that governance in the pharmaceutical sector has almost totally collapsed. As per the Drug Law the authorities are required to make gazette notification on maximum price of basic drugs. But it is not at work since long.
The chaos in the pharmaceutical sector has become really scandalous to force the country’s apex court to intervene. A High Court bench early this month directed the government to halt production of substandard medicine by 20 pharmaceutical companies and withdraw anti-biotic drugs of 14 companies from market immediately. They are presumably running the business under the protection of powerful people in the government like in the past.
The Drug Law of 1982 was highly appreciated that required compliance of highest standard along with control on exorbitant rise in medicine prices. We have been alarmed seeing the opposite now. Everyone knows that prices of medicine must be held in check only next to food item because they are basic requirement of human life. In our view the anarchy in the pharmaceutical industry must go and especially the prices of essential drugs must be held in check.
