Shortage of genuine medicines: market witnesses smuggled & spurious drugs - Pakistan.

Shortage of genuine medicines has provided space to smuggled and spurious drugs in the market, threatening the lives of innocent patients. According to stakeholders, patients are facing shortages of many medicines in Pakistan as over the past few years many drugs have either completely gone out of production or have vanished from the shelves. 

With the industry finding it difficult to meet the costs of production the crisis has made many Pakistanis suffer, from infants to adults and their doctors. The unavailability of medicines has created problems for the government authorities as well, especially those amongst the health department. Since manufacturing costs of drugs have risen against frozen selling prices since 2001, it has become very hard to optimise production leaving the patients wanting. The common man has been suffering from many problems and health related is usually the final nail in the coffin. Low priced life saving drugs such as Thyroxine and Lanoxin, priced at PKR100 and PKR35 per pack respectively, are smuggled to countries like Sri Lanka, Iran, Thailand etc and sold at profitable prices. This leads to an acute shortage of these drugs in Pakistan and as a result counterfeit and smuggled drugs from non-verifiable sources with no guarantee as to quality are being sold in the market at exorbitant prices anywhere between PKR300-500. 

Chemists interviewed in different areas said the supply of some drugs including life saving drugs, cough syrups and pain killers have shortage and are not easily available. They said that shortage also looms in some antibiotics as well. Few drugs named by chemists include: Gelusil, a leading anti acid, Acetyl syrup for cough, Xanax used to treat anxiety and panic disorder, Xaltide inhaler for asthma and Erythrocine antibiotic. 

While digging down the reasons for this shortage, price and regulatory policy related to toll manufacturing, have emerged to be the major reasons. Zameer Ahmed, a pharmacist said that there was acute shortage of life-saving drugs even in metropolitan city, creating problems for patients. Smuggled drugs may be the cause of many deaths and many patient conditions have worsened. Various drugs have been reported to be fake and of low quality as no guarantee of being genuine is provided. Many lives are at stake due to the non-availability of life saving drugs. Markets should be thoroughly checked and monitored to avoid these drug scams in the future, they said. 

Smuggling of drugs has made it very hard to maintain the quality, as a result substandard or spurious drugs have made there way across the market. Amidst many problems faced by the country, the highly criticised health system has not delivered, leaving many doctors and hospital administrations to suffer and be baffled with abusive language and blames for the pain and sufferings the patients and the families go through.