January 25, 2003	Saturday	Ziqa’ad 21, 1423

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RAWALPINDI, Jan 24: The city’s autonomous hospitals plan to end provision of free medicines and instead start providing subsidized drugs to the patients with a revolving pharmacy fund of about Rs10 million, sources said here on Friday.

Explaining the new system, the sources said the hospitals were presently unable to provide free medicines as required by their mandate to any of the patients because of resource constraints, therefore it had been decided to give relief to the patients in the shape of subsidies of upto 30 per cent on drug purchase instead of not giving them anything at all.

“There was no use of upholding the false slogan of free medicines, when we are not practically able to do so,” a source said.

Giving details of the plan, they said the hospitals would directly procure the medicines from the manufacturers, who supplied the drugs at a discount of 40 per cent.

Another 10 per cent, they said, were planned to be deducted for meeting the overhead expenses for running the new system and the benefit of the remaining 30 per cent discount would be passed to the patients.

Each component teaching hospital would contribute about Rs3 million to the Revolving Pharmacy Fund with which the procurement would be made. The sources said all the three component heads had agreed to start the new system of subsidized medicines and had sought rules and regulations that were currently being prepared. Similarly, the required infrastructure was being finalized for the new system, they added.

This matter, the sources said, was discussed at one of the previous Board of Governors meeting, but was again relegated for discussion at the executive committee level as the BoG had been told that the component hospital heads were not willing to start the new system. The executive committee again took up the issue at its last meeting and it was agreed to start the new system.

A source said someone had infact wrongly conveyed to the BoG about differences on the issue, though there was not anything of that sort.

However, the BoG meeting scheduled for February 1 may not be able to take up the issue, as the executive committee has yet to approve the rules and regulations and the infrastructural set up and the executive committee is not likely to meet before that.

Replying to reservations of some of the officials of the administration about the new system, they said these people were of the view that it would convey a wrong perception to the patients that the hospitals were involved in business with them. Similarly, they said there were apprehensions that the government had always had a bad experience of venturing into such arrangements and had ultimately suffered loss.

The sources said the hospitals were fully ready to launch the new system and were waiting for a green signal from the high- ups.

It should be recalled that the federal government in the past had also started such a system as Peoples Pharmacy, later renamed as Pharmax. The discounts promised at the time of starting the Peoples Pharmacy were renegotiated and were currently giving very less relief to the patients.