A dose of regulation

Enforcing the provisions of DRAP law will not be easy, given how widespread the manufacture and sale of fake drugs is.

There is now a greater chance that our citizens may be spared the menace of counterfeit or substandard drugs, which are sold freely across the country, with few checks in place. After many months of discussion, President Asif Ali Zardari, on November 12, signed the Drug Regulatory Authority Bill (DRAP) 2012, converting it into an applicable law. Under the law, an autonomous drug regulatory authority is to be created to regulate drug sales.

Apart from keeping a check on the quality of drugs, the body is also authorised to look into pricing issues — a vital concern given that drug prices in our country are the highest in the region owning to the presence of a powerful lobby of pharmaceutical companies further contributing to this. A challenge for the new regulatory authority will be to check this, as happens around the world.

The new law then stands in place. Parliament has been praised by the president for passing it, pharmaceutical companies urged to step up research and those selling spurious drugs warned of punishment. But much depends on what happens from here on. We have on our statute books a large number of laws which have hardly any impact in real terms. In the end, it all comes down to a matter of implementation and this is where we fail again and again. Enforcing the provisions of the DRAP law will not be easy, given how widespread the manufacture and sale of fake drugs is. Pricing presents still bigger problems. But the law marks an important step forward, demonstrating a commitment to public health. This demonstration must now be followed up by measures to enforce it, by involving local administrations and making it possible for people to make complaints. Only if this can be achieved will the new law and the goodwill behind it have a tangible effect and allow people to purchase medicines more safely for themselves and their families, thus improving the standards of healthcare available to them in a nation where this sector has been grossly neglected.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 14^th, 2012.