Medical emergency

Indecision is a decision, and in the case of the ongoing tussle between the Drug Pricing Committee (DPC) and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the latter’s indecisiveness may prove to be fatal. The Pakistan Pharmaceutical Manufacturers’ Association is now pressuring the prime minister to take some time out from his political engagements to immediately sign the summaries sent by the Drug Pricing Committee (DPC) last year since critically ill patients are suffering owing to his irresolution.

As custodian of his people’s welfare, the prime minister has the utmost responsibility to guarantee that the public’s health is looked after. In this situation, if Sharif does not sign summaries sent by the DPC, the near future looks bleak for patients of acute ailments like hepatitis C or those facing renal failure, since there is now a shortage of approximately 100 vital medicines across the country.

The adequate provision of healthcare is a fundamental human right. A dearth of medications will have repercussions that are directly linked to the recurrent failure of the federal government to act until it is absolutely necessary. This is reminiscent of the famine in Thar in December of 2014, where it was not until several hundred people died and a report from Unicef estimated that three million people were at risk of starvation, that the federal government finally paid heed to this humanitarian disaster.

With regard to this current quagmire, the prime minister is requested to act quickly and systematically. Now that the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan has demonstrated its inefficiency in the regulation of quality control and prices of drugs, the PM ought to finalise on the pricing proposals to restart the production and availability of a number of life-saving drugs. Every moment of further vacillation by the government on this subject puts innocent people’s lives at stake.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 21^st, 2017.

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