LAHORE: A group of pharmacists has supported the Drug Regulatory Authority Pakistan’s (DRAP’s) initiative to ensure the prescription of medicines with their generic names in all the provinces.

Addressing a press conference at the Lahore Press Club here on Saturday, Reformers Pharmacists Pakistan chief patron Mushtaq Chaudhry said DRAP had finally taken a decision to end the monopoly of the multinational firms which would bribe medics to prescribe medicines of choice. Prof Atif Raza, Prof Syed Nisar Hussain Shah, Shamshad Anees Hashmi, Rana Mateen, and Syed Naveed Shah were also present.

The chief patron of the association said DRAP wrote to the secretaries of health departments of the four provinces, Azad Jammu Kashmir, Gilgit-Baltistan and Islamabad Capital Territory commissioner that the citizens had complained through Prime Minister’s Performance Delivery Unit against company-influenced brand-based prescription of medicines by doctors in government and private sectors.

He said the DRAP had issued new advisory in this regard making it mandatory to ensure that the doctors at the state-run hospitals would prescribe medicines with their generic names.

Mr Chaudhry urged the authorities to appoint qualified pharmacists at the pharmacies in order to ensure the implementation of the advisory.

He said in the absence of qualified pharmacists, the complaints about the sale of medicines against the prescription were causing severe reactions and in many cases leading complications of the diseases.

He said that successive governments should make sure that the medicines prescribed with generic names must be sold under the new advisory of DRAP.

The pharmacists also urged that the government should come up with the amendments in the rules in order to implement DRAP’s new initiative in letter and spirit.

Published in Dawn, May 2nd, 2021