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KARACHI: The city is facing a shortage of medicines as many important drugs, mainly tranquillisers and some ‘life-saving drugs’, have vanished from the market or are available at higher than the prescribed retail prices at a few chemist shops, Dawn has learnt.
The medicines that are prescribed for thyroid diseases and blood pressure control are said to be in short supply as well.
After the shortage of tranquillisers, many patients, who were taking these drugs, are facing sleepless nights.
Many cough syrups have become short in the market while supply of some syrups has been resumed after an increase in their prices.
Sources told Dawn that many retailers, who had hoarded drugs in anticipation of a shortage, were now selling them at exorbitant rates.
Customers are being asked to pay higher than the prescribed rates on the pretext of shortage of medicines as retailers fully cash in on the situation.
Thyroxin, whose original retail price is Rs50 per packet, is now available at Rs100-120 per packet while chemists at many shops say that the medicine is not available with them.
However, the local version of this medicine is available at its original price.
A retailer said that the price of Thyroxin would have surged to Rs200 per packet if its local version had not been available in the market.
Almost all tranquilisers have disappeared from the market, the sources told Dawn.
Customers have been running from one shop to another to get Lexotanil, Xanax, ALP, Dormicum, Valium 10mg, Azocam, Revotril, Diazepam, etc.
Some retailers told Dawn that these medicines were not available in the wholesale market and many retailers, who run out of stocks, were only selling two to four tablets of these medicines to each customer.
During a survey of the market it was witnessed that retailers who had old stocks of Valium 10mg were demanding Rs100 for a 30 tablet packet as compared to its original retail price of Rs40.
A tablet of Lexotanil is being sold at Rs10 as compared to Rs4, while a Xanax tablet is selling at Rs8 to Rs9 as compared to its earlier price of Rs6.
Some retailers are demanding Rs275 for a 30-tablet packet of Xanas as compared to its earlier price of Rs191.
The original price of Revotril 0.5mg packet is Rs118 while its 2mg packet is sold at Rs131, but these are selling at over Rs200.
The sources told Dawn that local pharmaceutical companies had profited from the situation whose locally-manufactured drugs packed in strikingly similar packets were passed off to customers as foreign-made drugs.
At first sight the difference between different versions of Lexotanil is difficult to spot for a common man, they said.
Market sources said that black marketing was seen in medicines being produced by multinational companies.
Retailers said that some medicines for epilepsy such as Tryptinol and Phenobarbitone were also not easily available.
Regarding medicines for blood pressure, they said medicines such as Aldomet, Calan SR, Coversam, etc, and some multivitamin injections diluted in drip were also in short supply.
The Wholesale Chemist Council of Pakistan (WCCP) in its statement issued last week said that the price of Hydralin cough syrup had been raised to Rs59 from Rs30 followed by Peditral sachet price which had gone up from Rs10 to Rs27 and CAC 1000 (10 tablet pack) price which had reached Rs122 from Rs100.
A retailer in Saddar market said that Tixylix syrup price had been raised from Rs27 to Rs34 followed by Arinac syrup price that had been raised from Rs33 to Rs39.
Cough syrup Pulmonol price has also been raised to Rs65 from Rs39.
Senior vice chairman of the WCCP Shakeel Nagar urged the government to check the shortage of medicines and their price hike.
When a medical practitioner in Soldier Bazaar was asked about the effects on health if a patient suddenly stopped taking tranquilisers and blood pressure drugs because of their unavailability, he said: “There may be serious implications, which include withdrawal symptoms and damage to organs.”
When Dawn approached a patient seen going from store to store in search of a tranquilliser, he said he had been consuming this specific medicine for the past 10 years.
“After food, now it seems that even medicine will go out of the common man’s reach,” he said.
According to a notification issued on April 2 by the Drug Regulatory Agency of Pakistan (cabinet division), the federal government had allowed additions of up to Rs4, Rs6 and Rs10 per bottle of 60ml, 120ml and 450ml, respectively, in the retail price of liquid cough syrups.
