January 28, 2006	Saturday	Zilhaj 27, 1426

KARACHI, Jan 27: Speakers at an international workshop on quality and standards of medicine here on Friday underscored the need for supportive legislation and regulations to make environment more favourable for the growth of local pharmaceutical industry.

The three-day workshop was organized by the Pakistan Pharmaceutical Education Foundation (PPEF) in collaboration with the ministry of health and Pakistan Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (PPMA).

Speakers included Director EDQM, Council of Europe, Agnes Artiges, Deputy Head, Laboratories EDQM, Andrea Lodi, Director Bureau of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Canada, Sultan Ghani, Executive Director Technical, Brookes Pharmaceuticals, Nooruddin Siddiqui, Director Quality Service, Pharmeng Technology, Canada, Zahir Abbasi and Zeba Shuja Ahmed.

Speakers in their respective presentations suggested that national companies must build their plants in accordance with the FDA standards and look for more export opportunities paving way for sustainable and stable growth.

National companies were also advised to concentrate on persistent improvement in their product quality, possible through regular improvement in production facilities.

It was also observed that government needs to follow “leader price concept”, with no discrimination between prices of multinational and national companies.

The speakers stressed that registration process should be accelerated enabling companies to also invest in research and development, while the government itself could provide financial assistance and fiscal incentives to export-oriented units.

Public-private partnership in R&D should be encouraged and the industry and government should work together as in India, Bangladesh and other countries, they suggested.

Meanwhile, in the inaugural session, chief guest State Minister for Health Shehnaz Shaikh said stringent measures were being taken across the country to prevent production, supply and availability of spurious drugs.

A PPMA press release issued here on Friday also mentioned that the state minister said there were 17 institutes across the country producing skilled manpower for pharmaceutical industry.

PPEF President Abdul Haseeb Khan said the local pharmaceutical industry needed to adopt European quality standards to promote exports of medicines manufactured in Pakistan. —APP