Dishonest ministry

Pakistan is a country that tolerates, and even welcomes, patronage, connections and bribery. So it should come as no surprise that the National Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee has discovered that the Ministry of Science and Technology torpedoed a project to locally produce hepatitis C drugs, allegedly at the behest of multinational pharmaceutical companies. The molecular biologist who initiated the project was not only investigated for corruption, he was also placed on the Exit Control List. Simply revealing this matter is not enough. The case must now proceed to the National Accountability Bureau, where politicians and bureaucrats involved in scuttling this vital project should be named and removed from office. It is equally important to learn the names of the multinational companies that tried to bury the programme and put on trial those who were behind it.

Large pharmaceutical companies have been responsible for stifling innovation in the field of medicine around the world. In underdeveloped countries, they fight to make sure that generic drugs are not allowed to be sold so that their far costlier branded drugs can have a monopoly in the market. Millions of dollars are spent on patent wars to make sure there are no new entrants in the lucrative pharmaceutical market. Pakistan is particularly susceptible to this as it is in such dire need of foreign investment that we allow multinational companies to ride roughshod over us in any manner they please.

Temptation, weakness and the profit motive are not excuses for forgiving those in the government or the companies who destroyed the local hepatitis C project. In Pakistan, hepatitis C remains a massive problem because vaccinations are not freely available and drugs are prohibitively expensive. Instead of subsidising drugs, the government is actively working on behalf of big drug companies. Stifling local innovation in the field is a crime that could have potentially cost thousands of lives. That is something the guilty parties will have to live with and hopefully be punished for.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 25^th, 2012.