DYING from medicine is fatally frequent in Pakistan. The unbridled retailing of dubious drugs threatens to leave scores between life and death, yet the government seems indifferent. Last week, Drap seized a consignment from Thailand of pharmaceutical ingredients with high levels of impurities that cause life-threatening reactions – damaged heart, kidneys and nervous system. In 2022, the regulator confiscated many ‘lifesaving medicines’ without pharmaceutical components in Sindh. Weeks later, it discovered multiple fake drugs being sold under various trade names in Karachi. And last year saw two shocking scandals – 12 diabetes patients in Lahore, Kasur and Jhang lost their eyesight to eye injections and the Punjab government banned five cough syrups after a WHO alert. Such incidents are eerie reminders of the tragedy at the Punjab Institute of Cardiology over a decade ago, and bring about the sad realisation that lives are worth little.

What these mishaps expose is the state’s unwillingness to tackle the havoc caused by spurious drugs. The blame also lies with Drap for slipshod monitoring and failure to curtail bogus medicine scams. It is not a tall order for the authority to clamp down on the rackets through warnings against stocking substandard medicines in pharmacies. Citizens must be made aware of how important it is to purchase medicines from reliable drugstores with qualified chemists. Repeated accidents also indicate that drug regulation requires large-scale restructuring and enforcement of accountability and drug controls in the pharma industry, aided by a certified drug manual for practitioners, chemists and consumers, thereby suppressing the counterfeit medicine business. Furthermore, private healthcare and safe, imported drugs are exclusive to a small section of the well-heeled. The poor have the singular option of state-run hospitals, which is why the quality of public health services and medicines available there have to be safeguarded by the government. Only active measures and regulations can save us from health catastrophes.

Published in Dawn, January 15th, 2024