ISLAMABAD, July 24: The proposed policy draft on deregulation, if implemented, will have a devastating effect on affordability, availability, quality, rational use and safety of pharmaceutical products in the country, claims a consumer rights watchdog.

The Network representatives while briefing reporters here on Wednesday expressed serious concern on the government’s move to deregulate the pharmaceutical sector under certain pressure.

“We consider it a conspiracy against the consumers and made a case for the review of the policy to make it consumer friendly,” said Ayyaz Kiani, programme coordinator (research and advocacy) and Azhar Hussain, project coordinator (pharmaceuticals). They also criticized the government for ignoring the public health needs.

They said forums in different cities like Karachi, Hyderabad, Lahore, Quetta and Peshawar will be organized to build a pressure against the policy.

They alleged that the new policy draft did not even take into account the concept of essential drugs promoted vigorously by the health authorities throughout the world. “Incidentally, the year 2002 was the year of silver jubilee celebrations of success of this concept in the world.” “While the world is celebrating this most consumer friendly concept, the government is about to remove it,” they deplored.

They questioned the process through which this policy was being formulated, and pointed out that in the meeting of the ECC on July 22, all the stakeholders were given the chance to express their views except the consumer representatives.

Commenting on the government’s assumption underlying the new policy of deregulation, they said that it would not increase market competition which was supposed to bring down the drug prices. This assumption was just a wishful thinking, they said adding that it did not work in 1993 and would not work now.

On the registration of drugs, they said that by relaxing the registration procedure in the name of speeding the process and registering any drug which was registered in USA, UK, ECC or Japan would flood the market with non-essential and expensive drugs and gobble up the limited resources of the country.

They also questioned the existing speed of registration which was quite high and pointed out that in the last registration meeting, 500 drugs had been registered.

They said the pharmaceutical sector was a regulated sector all over the world and that the principles of free market economy could not be applied blindly on this sector.