People decry sale of spurious drugs in Rawalpindi, Islamabad

DRAP official says will continue efforts to end sale of unregistered and counterfeit medicines

ISLAMABAD: Citizens of twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad have urged the authorities concerned to take strict action against sale of sub-standard and spurious drugs by the medical stores.

According to them, while playing with the lives of others, many medical stores avoid to follow concerned laws while giving the jobs of sales managers to those who do not have even basic knowledge about medicines.

They asked to ensure deputing only pharmacists at medical stores with having relevant qualification on the subject to protect the customers from dealing with complications due to use of any wrong medicine from hands of illiterate sales managers.



Saqib Kamran, a citizen said that Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) has an important role to play in this regard to ensure fulfillment of all laws by the medical stores and pharmaceutical companies.

He said that only experienced pharmacists with having relevant degrees should be allowed to deal with the customers at medical stores.

Aslam Awan, another citizen said that pharmaceutical companies should consider the seriousness of the matter and deliver stock to only those medical stores where all concerned laws are followed.

He suggested conducting regular surprise visit by the teams of DRAP to the medical stores to check any sale of sub-standard or spurious drugs besides following other laws.

When contacted, an official of DRAP said that the authority will continue its campaign against the spurious and unregistered drugs by its National Task Force with its full strength till the complete eradication of this heinous crime.

He said that with the support of provincial governments, DRAP is determined to grab the culprits with iron hands and in this regard various activities have been done by DRAP with provincial governments.

He said that during recent raid which was conducted in Karachi by a joint team of DRAP Karachi and Sindh government, unregistered drugs were recovered while in another raid in Faisalabad National Task Force with Punjab Government has recovered various unregistered drugs and FIR has been launched and two persons were arrested. He said that Pharmaceutical Evaluation and Registration Division of DRAP was continuously working on digital listing of all registered drugs to facilitate concerned stakeholders and healthcare professionals.

The official said that this facility would ensure quality drugs from licensed manufactures or importers, in the market and would also help to address the problems of drug shortages and availability.

He said online access to this database would strengthen regulatory system and monitoring in order to eradicate unregistered, substandard, spurious, falsified and counterfeit drug products from the country.

He said a provisional database has been uploaded on the official website of DRAP and the link is available on the DRAP's website, which was sourced to database that contain information of drugs registered by the registration board.

This information mainly included registration number, proprietary or brand name, generics name with composition, name of manufacturer or importer.

However, as the process of computerization had been initiated for the first time therefore the record was being under continuous verification and scrutiny, he added.

He said the authority had also invited stakeholders to review information related to their products and are directed to contact the division in case of any discrepancy and check for the updates and provide reference for further verification against the DRAP record, before the authority finalizes and declare this information.  

Published in The Express Tribune, September 21^st, 2018.