A meeting of National Assembly’s standing
committee on Health was held in the Committee room of M/o National
Health Regulation, Services and Coordination under the Chairman ship of
Mr. Kahlid Hussain Magsi. Ms. Saira Afzal Tarar, Minister of State;
Mr.Ayub Shaikh, Secretary and Dr.Muahmmad Aslam Chief Executive Officer
(CEO), Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) also attended the
meeting. The Committee offered fateha for victims of Quetta bomb blast.
CEO, DRAP gave a detailed presentation on working of DRAP. He briefed
that after promulgation of DRAP’s Act, 2012, necessary legislation has
been done for regulating Health & Over The Counter drugs, Medical
Devices and Medicated Cosmetics and pharmaceutical products. He shared
performance of various DRAP’s divisions viz. licensing, registration and
pricing and shared that despite of human resource constraints,
performance of these divisions have been increased. He also informed
that World Health Organization has conducted initial assessment of DRAP
and in 2017 Central Drugs Testing Laboratory, Karachi will be WHO
pre-qualified and accredited laboratory. To further strengthen
inspection system of pharmaceutical manufacturing units, DRAP has
started working with Pharmaceutical Inspection Co-Operation Scheme
(PIC/S), Australia and planning for further training of DRAP’s officers
for effective implementation of Good manufacturing Practices in
pharmaceutical manufacturing units. Moreover in order to further
strengthen pharmaceutical registration system, DRAP will start receiving
registration applications on Common Technical Document format in early
2017. It will further help in increasing national pharmaceutical
exports, which are otherwise decreasing.
CEO, DRAP shared that first time in history, a comprehensive Drug
Pricing Policy has been approved in 2015 by the government, which was
declared by independent analysts as fair, transparent and balanced
policy with least discretionary powers. In this policy, annual price
increase is linked with Consumer Price Index. Moreover, hardship
category and orphan drug policy was introduced to provide solution for
unfeasible and critically needed drugs. This policy is not only about
price increase but for first time price reduction mechanism is also
introduced. Some pharmaceutical companies have increased the prices of
their drugs at their own and then got stay orders from Sind High Court,
Karachi. DRAP is vigorously following these cases in higher courts and
has requested the courts for early fixation of dates for disposal of the
cases. Moreover, the government has also drafted legislation for
imposing punishment and fine for unauthorized increase in prices of
drugs by pharmaceutical companies.
In order to curb the menace of spurious drugs, DRAP has decided to
introduce bar coding system first time in the country as in developed
world and legislation for this purpose will be finalized soon. CEO
briefed that recruitment process in various cadres of DRAP has been
finalized and soon we will have new human resource in the organization
for more speedy work.
Meeting of National Assembly’s standing committee will further continue
for coming 2 days and will also discuss other matters related to DRAP
and National Health Regulation, Services and Coordination.
