ISLAMABAD: The government admitted in the National Assembly on Tuesday that substandard drugs are being sold in the capital.

The admission came in response to a calling attention notice submitted by MNAs Khalida Mansoor and Surriya Asghar.

The notice invited the attention of the national health services (NHS) minister towards the availability of substandard and spurious drugs in Islamabad’s pharmacies. MNAs argued that the sales of these drugs were putting citizens’ lives at risk.

The parliamentary secretary for NHS, Dr Darshan, said while provincial governments are responsible for acting against sale of spurious drugs in their respective provinces, in the capital, the Islamabad Capital Territory administration takes action.

“Last year, 12 companies were fined and licences of 17 firms were cancelled. Over a dozen people have been punished after spurious drugs were recovered from them,” Dr Darshan said.

Parliament is already considering a draft of the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (Amendment) Act 2016, which sees harsher punishments for companies manufacturing substandard drugs and makes the crime a non-bailable offence.

An NHS ministry official, who was not authorised to speak on the record, agreed that manufacture and sale of spurious medication could only be prevented by harsher punishments.

“Patients suffer due to substandard medicines. Let’s suppose, if a cardiac patient needs a fixed dose of medicine to decrease cholesterol in the blood, or needs blood thinners – substandard medicine would not achieve the required result, and could result in a heart attack,” he said.

“In the Code of Criminal Procedure, there is a standard for three to seven years in prison, but in the case of medicines it is six months in prison and a fine of Rs50,000 to Rs100,000, because of which companies continue making su-bstandard drugs."

Published in Dawn October 5th, 2016