Soaring medicine prices

The prices of essential medicines had already been rising at a concerning pace well before the Iran War created a global supply chain collapse. Critics accuse the government of failing to control drug prices, while also accepting that raw material costs and fuel prices have risen significantly in the last few years. However, the government's response has also been absolute denial. Notably, the government has consistently claimed that any price changes are within the government-approved selling prices, but this is an obfuscation intended to frame the price rises as being more pre-approved, without explicitly admitting that any increase - even within an approved range - is still an increase.

Meanwhile, the political class seems to have forgotten that public perception is an even bigger problem - though only a few medicines have seen prices rising, they have cemented a belief in the public that the rises are much steeper and across the board. The government's unsympathetic approach has worsened the perceived impact of the price hikes. Then we had the Hormuz blockade, which has caused further supply chain disruptions and threatens to drive more inflation across the board. Experts warn that while the major impact of the blockade will be on imported medicines, which only make up about 15% of the domestic market, there is a high likelihood that the prices of raw materials - up to 90% of which are imported - will also be affected, which would either cause the prices of locally manufactured medicines to rise or lead to protests from drugmakers.

The reality is that Pakistan does not have a lot of viable solutions. Subsidising the prices of medicines would almost certainly be unaffordable, while shifting to domestic raw materials would require significant infrastructure investment and, even then, may still not be competitive. The only workable short-term solution is to improve the prescription system to make it harder for consumers to buy antibiotics and several other life-saving medicines without prescriptions, as this creates shortages and increases the prevalence of drug-resistant bacteria.