ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has been urged to impose government’s control on medicine prices again as drug prices have been continuously increasing.

Moreover, he has been requested to form a joint investigation team (JIT) to probe all the illegalities committed by the officials of the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (Drap).

In a letter to the prime minister, Punjab Bar Council memberSardar Adeeb Aslam Bhinder has pointed out that just two days before the general elections on Feb 6 the caretaker setup had removed the mandatory government control on medicine prices.

It has been claimed that since then medicine prices have been increasing rapidly due to which poor patients and their families were suffering.

“Drap officials are doing foreign tours sponsored by private pharmaceutical companies,” he alleged.

The letter alleged that the a former Chief Executive Officer of Drap had declared himself dead to avoid a National Accountability Bureau (NAB) case and later was dismissed on the orders of the Islamabad High Court as Higher Education Commission declared his degree fake.

While quoting the India’s medicine export data, Sardar Adeeb Aslam Bhinder has claimed that India’s pharmaceutical export climbed by 9.67pc to $27.9 billion in 2023-24; whereas Pakistan had exported $399 million in pharmaceutical products.

On the other hand, import of pharmaceutical products has been increasing day by day in Pakistan.

Letter claimed that there was hardly any growth of Registered Medicines Manufacturing Units in Pakistan and there was not a single FDA or EU approved Pharmaceutical Unit in Pakistan, whereby India is the only country with largest number of US-FDA compliant pharma plants (more than 262 including APIs) outside of the US.

“India has nearly 1400 WHO-GMP approved pharma plants, 253 European Directorate of Quality Medicines approved plants with modern state of the art technology.

Prime minister has been urged to form a joint investigation team to probe all the illegalities against the officials of Drap.

Published in Dawn, March 4th, 2025