LAHORE: A lawyer has approached the Lahore High Court challenging a huge increase in prices of medicines by the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (Drap).

“The increase in medicine prices is not eight and 15pc as is being claimed by Drap, but prices of more than 90pc medicines have been increased by 100pc to 200pc. And prices of 70pc medicines manufactured by multinational companies have been increased by 200pc,” claimed Advocate Nadeem Sarwar in his public interest petition.

He explained that Drap approved the increase in prices of medicines in two phases – it first issued a notification on Dec 31, 2018, for price adjustment of 889 medicines. Out of them, the prices of 395 medicines were later reduced, while those of 463 falling in the hardship category were increased up to 200pc based on their cost of production and formula prices.

Beside this, the petitioner stated, Drap also allowed a further increase in prices of the 463 hardship medicines up to 9pc due to appreciation of dollar. This showed that the respondent authority approved increase in the prices of 463 medicines twice in one go, he argued.

The second notification was issued by Drap on Jan 10, 2019, for regular medicines according to which all drugs registered with the regulatory body had been allowed to increase their prices by eight to 15pc. He contended that 65,000 medicines are registered with the authority out of which 45,000 were available in the local market.

Advocate Sarwar pleaded that the pharmaceutical companies firstly increased prices on their own in December 2018 without approval from the government, and later the respondent authority also allowed increase in the prices without considering the illegal hike by the companies.

He submitted that the government had approved another hike a month later in January 2019. Even then, the pharmaceutical companies increased the prices on their own for the second time.

The lawyer believed that the inadvertent across-the-board increase in drugs prices might affect the lives of poor patients. He argued the acts of the respondents were in violation of articles 9 and 37 (d) of the Constitution and that the medicine prices could only be increased through a federal government notification.

He petitioner sought a court direction for Drap to bring the medicine prices in accordance with the notifications issued by the government after deducting unlawful increases by the pharmaceutical companies. It asked the court to summon from the authority the record of medicine prices in the last two years.

Published in Dawn, January 9th, 2020