June 4, 2002	Tuesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 22,1423

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PESHAWAR, June 3: In the wake of sky-rocketing of drug prices manufactured by the multinational companies, substandard drugs made locally are doing a roaring business due to their low prices, doctors and pharmacists told Dawn.

All kinds of drugs, including antibiotics, life-saving drugs, pain-killers, anti-depressants, steroids, cough syrups, etc, are being supplied to the market with different trade names and varying prices by over a hundred pharmaceutical firms, said a doctor.

Giving an example, he said that a pain-killer drug (Diclofenac Sodium) was being sold under 80 different names. All of these drugs contained similar active ingredient ‘Diclofenac Sodium’ while their price varied from company to company.

Likewise, he added, antibiotics like amoxillin, ampicillin, co-trimaxazole, cefotaxim, ciprofloxacin etc, have flooded the market with different trade names and varying prices.

Medical stores near Khyber Teaching Hospital, Lady Reading Hospital and Hayatabad Medical Complex, are replete with low-quality pharmaceutical products. The dismal drug scenario can be gauged from the fact that there were 38,000 registered drugs in Pakistan and with the inclusion of the unregistered ones, the total number of available drugs has crossed the 50,000 mark.

Additionally, drugs from India and Iran are also being smuggled and sold here without any check. Even unnamed drugs could be found in Peshawar.

A pharmacist told Dawn that drug-sellers preferred to deal in medicines manufactured and marketed by local companies because they offer over 50 per cent commission, while the amount offered by the MNCs never exceeds 15 per cent. A huge difference in drug prices also attracts the poor patients. He said that these cheap quality drugs often proved counter-effective for the patients.

“In all sorts of emergencies, we first administer a pain-killer injection to provide relief to the patients but the pain-killer often proves ineffective,” remarked a nurse at a city hospital. She said that they always asked the attendants to bring good quality drugs but druggists were able to sell substandard medicines.

The local drug manufacturers claim that their products could compete with those manufactured by the MNCs. They accused the doctors of promoting the MNCs by taking bribes and receiving gifts from them.

The MNCs, on the other hand, believed that they spent millions of dollars on research which enhanced prices of their products. They also argued that they import top-quality raw material from their parent countries for which payments were made in hard currency while the local companies purchased low-quality raw material from the local markets, which often proved ineffective.

According to doctors, the main reason behind sale of substandard drugs is the desire to earn more and more profit on the part of medical store owners, who in numerous cases compromise on the quality of medicines.

A doctor alleged that the officials at the Drug Testing Laboratory (DTL) received grafts from the manufacturers and sellers of substandard drugs, allowing them to play havoc with the health of the people.

He said there was an urgent need to improve the performance of drug inspectors and officials working at the sole DTL of the province to save the patients’ lives.