ISLAMABAD: The Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (Drap) on Wednesday claimed that during last two years it conducted 44,217 raids and registered 543 cases of spurious and low-quality medicines.

It was claimed during a briefing given to Federal Minister for National Health Services (NHS) Abdul Qadir Patel during his maiden visit to Drap.

The minister appreciated the initiatives taken by Drap to ensure quality assured, safe and effective therapeutic goods.

“Drap’s role in ensuring availability of therapeutic goods is paramount and no efforts will be spared to make it a model regulatory body in the region,” he said.

He also appreciated Drap’s e-governance initiatives that include complete office automation, online application management systems and mobile applications for reporting complaints about drugs.

“Government’s priority is to give relief to the people. For this purpose, Drap’s role to enhance accessibility to therapeutic goods shall be further strengthened. Drap should further facilitate the patients for issuance of NOCs, to import drugs, through establishing a coordinated mechanism with various Embassies of Pakistan,” he said.

Federal Minister also agreed with Drap’s strategy to further improve quality and exports of therapeutic goods with strong interprovincial coordination and international accreditations of its laboratories and other regulatory functions.

Mr Patel said that despite of limited human resources, Drap has performed well. He directed the concerned authorities to find a way forward to challenges faced by Drap with regards to infrastructural and professional human resources including longstanding promotion issues of Drap employees.

Chief Executive Officer Asim Rauf apprised the Federal Minister about performance of Drap that it has been widely acknowledged by various international organizations such as World Health Organization and United States Pharmacopoeia, etc.

He said that Drap’s crack down through National Task Force for curbing spurious, unregistered, and smuggled medicine produced huge impact. During two years a total of 44,217 raids were conducted and over 500 cases of spurious and low-quality medicines were registered.

Last year, Drap disposed of 5,842 applications for the registration of drugs and approved 38 new licenses for pharmaceutical units. Owing to increasing demand for medical devices, 15 new medical device manufacturing units were established in the country and a total of 1,104 medical devices were registered.

CEO Drap also informed that availability issues of around 12 drugs were also resolved proactively.

Published in Dawn, June 9th, 2022