LAHORE, Jan 16: State Health Minister Shehnaz Sheikh says the government has decided to establish an independent drug regulatory authority with an objective to ensure availability of quality medicines to patients and to put an end to favouritism as far as registration of medicines is concerned.
Speaking to businessmen at the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) on Monday, she welcomed a suggestion from the chamber regarding inclusion of the private sector in the purchase committee and promised to take up the issue as the Lahore chamber’s participation in the committee would help improve the things.
She said “Health for All” was the slogan of President Pervez Musharraf, and the government was striving to materialize it. She said a visible change was taking place at the health front as for the first time last year the health budget was doubled and more money would hopefully be allocated in the coming years.
The minister said the priority was given to the poorer parts of the country as in the urban areas the medical facilities were up to some extent within the reach of people.
Earlier, speaking on the occasion, LCCI president Mian Shafqat Ali said after the introduction of devolution plan, renewal and registration of firms had been stopped by the health department, creating difficulties for the pre-qualified and registered firms as well as for the district governments, which were not familiar with these procedures. It was proposed that the registration and pre-qualification of firms may be carried out by the department and district offices/institutions as per previous practice.
All firms/suppliers holding agency agreement and already included in the Product Vocabulary List may be treated as pre-qualified with the health department and issued pre-qualification certificates for their whole range of items, he said. Moreover, he said, new manufacturers/items or change of local agents should be pre-qualified within a maximum timeframe of six weeks.
He said the independent hospitals and institutions were purchasing equipment without following the purchase rules, and asked the bidders to deposit different amounts as security money in the same category. Moreover in most of the cases, time to bid for quotations was too short and no standardization was carried out as per rules of business/financial rules notified by the Punjab government approved under legislation. It was proposed that hospitals and institutions may be instructed to follow the purchase rules mentioned in the purchase manual.
Speaking on the occasion, LCCI senior vice-president Abdul Basit said health was a humanitarian issue and it must not be mixed with profit-making as with increasing rate of poverty in the country people hardly got medical facilities.
He said electro-medical equipment was complicated and required good experts for repair and maintenance. It was proposed that only the original supplier or their authorized agents may be engaged to service or repair such equipment.
Vice-president Aftab Ahmad Vohra said the facility of medical tests should be provided in all government hospitals so that needy and the poor segments of society could benefit from it.
Finally, he said, “we need to revisit the concept for providing health facility to all. No one is less or more deserving when we talk of providing health facilities. The poor, the affluent, and the public servants everyone has the right to quality health facility. The government needs to ensure that the business community that pays taxes with which the public sector hospitals function should not wait in long lines for getting rooms booked.”