LAHORE – The Health Ministry’s go-ahead to multi-national and local pharmaceutical companies for raising the prices of over 350 drugs has sent ripples among family physicians who see the move as adding burden on the pockets of hapless masses.
The medical community aware of the activities and motives of ‘government-pharma companies nexus’ is alarmed over the recent development.
They believe that the Health Ministry has taken the move to please the pharmaceutical companies, instead of reducing the prices to bridge the gap between actual and retail prices of medicines for larger public interest.
Pakistan Academy of Family Physicians President Dr Tariq Mehmood Mian said that the decision would take the medicines out of reach for the common man. Even if the government wants to increase the prices, he said, it should provide them to patients on subsidized rates. He said that the masses could boycott any commodity except drugs as it was essential for saving human life.
It is imminent to mention here that the Supreme Court had directed the concerned authorities to reduce the retail prices of medicines, on September 30, 2007, bringing them closer to the actual prices. 
According to details, Dr Shamas Soomro from Rahim Yar Khan wrote a letter to the Chief Justice of Pakistan regarding zero result of a life-saving drug injection Lozone. The physician said that he had purchased the medicine at Rs36 from Lohari Market while the retail printed on the packet was Rs 395. Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry took notice and directed the Health Ministry to pick the said injection from the market and get it analysed at National Institute of Health. The analysis report also revealed the injection had zero result.
The CJP expressed anger over the huge difference in actual and retail price of medicines and directed the provincial governments to monitor the medicine prices and submit detailed report on monthly basis to the Registrar Supreme Court through Federal Health Ministry.
The CJ noticed that the companies could sell medicine up to 45 percent less than the trade prices and directed them to rationalise prices on their own or the government functionaries would fix the retail after giving logical profit margin.
Following the SC orders, two medicine companies, PDH Lahore and Global Pharma Rawalpindi considerably reduced retails of few brands. However the process was hampered by then President Musharraf’s action against the judiciary.
Now, the powerful pharmaceutical companies connive with Federal institutions to set the retail prices of various medicines according to their wishes, and later send them in to the market at a far low price, than the one printed on packs.
In doing so, the companies save cost of setting up a marketing network by giving huge profit margins to wholesalers, retailers and private practitioners. Unseen distribution of huge profits cause the market forces to promote specific medicines that not only increases sale of pharmaceutical companies, but also make the products known to the masses without any serious effort.
The retailers fleece the customers by giving alternative medicine, with the same formula, but 10 times more profit margin. Medical practitioners also purchase the drugs directly from the wholesale market at the Lohari Gate, and sell them to patients at their clinics.