KARACHI, Sept 3: Aggressive marketing techniques on part of national and multi-national pharmaceutical companies is increasingly noticed creating unnecessary scare among the public regarding different diseases.

Doctors talking to APP on Tuesday specifically referred to the pseudo-public awareness messages issued by many of the drug and vaccine distributors and retailers, particularly those of Hepatitis A and Hepatitis C (HVC) vaccine.

“The two diseases are being constantly, though wrongly, cited to be synonym to liver cancer,” Dr Syed Abdul Mujib said, adding that as a matter of fact it takes quite a long period and that also in case of severe negligence on part of patients as well as doctors that HVC may turn into cirrhosis coupled with related complications.

He further clarified that in 15 per cent of Hepatitis C instances the virus is simply benign while in other 15 per cent cases it rarely causes any severe impact.

For 70 per cent of the remaining instances the ailment, in its initial stages, could be treated through proper medical interventions, he said and stressed that cautious approach was required to get across the message that ‘prevention is better than cure’.

Apart from causing great agony to the public, the tendency to exaggerate intensity of any disease prevalence in the country also exposes public to be trapped by quacks besides being compelled to go for spurious drugs as their purchasing capacity to procure quality drugs, meant to protect them from a wide range of ailments, gets saturated after some time.

Dr Mujib was equally supported by Dr Shahzad Hasan, who mentioned that despite the fact that a child once inflicted with polio required no drug therapy but immediate rehabilitative support, there was no dearth of marketeers and retailers making false claim regarding efficacy of drugs, including multi-vitamin compounds, good enough to cure the crippling disease.

Many of the doctors also referred to the fact that the cough and cold syrups, available in abundance in the local markets, are often projected to be equally good to cure ailments such as asthma.

Under the given scenario, the authorities concerned have been urged to ensure that promotional activities of pharmaceutical companies and retailers of medicines and drugs are kept under strict vigil protecting people from unwanted distress.

—APP