ISLAMABAD: The Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) on Thursday increased prices of 11,000 medicines (excluding life saving drugs) by 15 per cent.

The notification will be applicable only to those medicines whose prices had not been increased since 2001.

A senior officer of Ministry of Health Services told Dawn that due to the price issue some medicines were not available in the market and people were facing serious problems.

“Considering the plight of patients, the prices of life saving drugs including medicines of nephrology (kidney diseases), heart diseases, oncology (cancer), hepatitis, ulcer and blood pressure will stay unchanged,” he said.

“There are as many as 55,000 registered medicines. Of these, only 16,000 are being sold in the market and at least 5,000 drugs are in the negative list or life saving drugs so prices of these medicines have not been increased,” he said.

He said that if a medicine’s price had been increased by 10 per cent after 2001, it would get the increase of only 5 percent now.

Pharmaceutical industry sources, however, said that they were not satisfied with the government’s move and would contact the ministry again for price review.

The notification further said that maximum retail prices would definitely be printed on the label in a manner prescribed by the Drugs Rules 1986.

DRAP Director of Pricing Amanullah said that issue of prices had been discussed in a meeting of Drugs Pricing Committee in which representatives of provinces, Ministry of Finance and Consumer Rights Commission participated.

“Although we agreed that considering the inflation and other indicators, prices of drugs should be increased by 94 per cent, but because of problems being faced by the common man, it was decided to increase prices by 15 per cent and ensure availability of drugs.

“We know that pharmaceutical industry representatives are not happy and want a 50 per cent increase, but it was not possible for the ministry,” he explained.

Pakistan Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Association (PPMA) chairman Nasir Chowdhry, told Dawn that the DRAP initially assured the association that prices would be increased by 50 per cent and then 18 per cent but the notification issued on Thursday was otherwise.

“Some of our colleagues have been considering going to courts. I have told them that the court will again refer us to the ministry so we should talk to the ministry again. Prices of medicines have been increased with immediate effect,” he said.

The Federal Secretary, Minister of Health Services, Imtiaz Inayat Elahi, while talking to Dawn said that finally the issue of price review had been resolved and hopefully the pharmaceutical industry would consider problems of the common people.

“It is impossible to increase prices of life saving drugs because increase in prices of these medicines which were included in the negative list will multiply problems of the middle and lower middle classes,” he said.