Health ministry’s devolution: Drug makers concerned about quality control

Manufacturers demand federal body to regulate quality control of drugs.

KARACHI:

Pharmaceutical manufacturers have opposed the devolution of the Ministry of Health to provinces as they are unsure who will be regulating the highly profitable industry at the turn of fiscal year on July 1.

“One of the biggest challenges that the pharmaceutical industry is currently facing is the health ministry’s proposed transfer to provinces which will also cause the devolution of the pharmaceutical industry,” said Pakistan Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (PPMA) Chairman Haroon Qasim. “There is a danger in this because standards of every province will be different,” he said. He was speaking to the media at the Karachi Press Club on Wednesday in connection with the 1st Pakistan Pharma Summit that will be held on June 14-15. The summit will assess the needs of the pharmaceutical industry – which stakeholders said was at a crossroads – make it grow, anticipate and adapt to challenges.

“If you want the same standards of medicines [across the country] then the health ministry should remain a federal subject,” said former PPMA chairman Kaiser Waheed. “Since every province will be setting their own standards, it will affect the quality of local medicines as well as ones that are being exported,” he added.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 2^nd, 2011.