KARACHI: There is need to do collective and meaningful struggle by Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) and Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP) for the purpose of increasing export of medicines from the country.
This was stated by Chairman of National Assembly’s Standing Committee on National Health Services, Regulations, and Coordination; Khalid Hussain Magsi during his visit of Drug Testing Laboratory here in Karachi the other day. The chairman of the National Assembly’s Standing Committee, who toured the Drug Testing lab along with his colleague MNAs being member of the standing committee, also addressed the office-bearers of DRAP and Pakistan Pharmaceutical Manufacturers’ Association (PPMA).
The session chaired by chairman of National Assembly’s Standing Committee took under consideration issues regarding review on retail prices of medicines, registration of medicines, and prevention of public sale of spurious drugs in the country.
The PPMA office-bearers informed the members of National Assembly’s Standing Committee that at present exports of medicines from India stood at 20 billion US Dollars annually while the volume of same exports from Pakistan was Rs 190 million. They said that a collective committee of TDAP and DRAP should be constituted for boosting the efforts for promotion of medicines’ exports from Pakistan,
The PPMA officials said that Drug regulatory authority was supposed to review and adopt a new its policies so that people living in every part of the country could get access to medicines of best quality and standard.
The DRAP’s Chief Executive Officer Dr Muhammad Aslam said the pharmaceutical industry in Pakistan had been flourishing at a fast pace with further scope of expansion of the industry. He said that there had been present some 700 licensed manufacturing units in the country engaged in production of medicines of international standards.
The CEO of the Drug regulatory authority said that major centre of production of spurious drugs was located somewhere in Northern Areas of the country while his authority had been making efforts to end the sale of such fake medicines from the market.
He said the manufacturing units of Pakistan’s Pharmaceutical industry had been recently visited by the representative team of World Health Organization while the WHO’s team had expressed satisfaction over standards being maintained in production of drugs in the country.
The chairman and members of the NA’s Standing Committee on National Health Services, assured utmost cooperation to office-bearers of DRAP and PPMA for promotion and development of Pakistan’s Pharma industry.
Also present on the occasion were Acting Chairman of PPMA Mansoor Dilawar, Zonal Chairman of the association Dr Qaiser Waheed, former chairman Zahid Saeed, Asad Shujjah, Khawaja Muhammad Asad.