Pakistan faces shortage of life-saving medicines including insulin: Report

Pakistan is facing a shortage of insulin for diabetes patients and the medical market in Karachi is getting worse, reported Pak vernacular media Daily Express.

Apart from this, the shortage of other life-saving medicines also persists while there is a crisis of imported medicines from foreign countries.

When pharmaceutical companies have to raise the price of a drug, they reduce its supply or stop manufacturing altogether due to which there is a shortage of medicine in the market.

During artificial shortages, drugs are charged at exorbitant prices. At present, the situation is that domestic pharmaceutical companies are active in the black market while many foreign companies have withdrawn their business from Pakistan due to low returns on their investment, reported Daily Express.

The drug price and quality monitoring agency (DRAP) should focus on how to ensure the quality of drugs without increasing prices and how to stop the smuggling and sale of fake and substandard drugs, suggested Daily Express.

Meanwhile, the non-opening of LCs of pharmaceutical companies in Pakistan increased the fear of stopping the production of medicine, reported Nawai Waqt.

Due to the non-availability of dollars, banks refused to open LCs. Orders from China, India, the US and Western Europe were stuck.

The pharmaceutical companies have expressed fear that they will not be able to supply the medicine worth Rs 40 even at Rs 60 if they do not get the raw material, added Nawai Waqt.

Shortages started to occur in the wholesale markets of medicine, resulting in black marketing. The shortage of medicine could lead to human tragedy.

Meanwhile, fearing a shortage of medicines, especially essential and life-saving drugs in the country in the near future, the Federal Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination (NHS,R & C) has approached the Ministry of Finance to resolve the issue of Letters of Credit (LCs) being faced by the pharmaceutical industry for the import of raw materials of the medicines, reported The News International.

The NHS official informed that they approached the Ministry of Finance on the recommendations of the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP), which warned the federal health ministry that the inability to import raw materials of medicines and other products used for the production of medicines could result in shortage in the months to come, thereby leading to a serious health crisis in the country.

"Pakistan's medicine manufacturing industry is import-based, which means that almost 95 per cent of the medicines produced in the country are manufactured with raw materials imported from China, India and some other countries of the world. If the raw materials or Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) is not imported into Pakistan, medicines' manufacturing can come to a halt," the official waned.