The Awami League-led 14-party alliance government will not be able to update the national drug policy during its remaining tenure, following a High Court ruling banning the passage of Drug Policy 2013 for six months.
Despite committing to the update in its election manifesto in 2008, any review by the government is now unlikely following the High Court directive to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare
Several senior officials at the ministry and the Directorate General of Drug Administration (DGDA) told the Dhaka Tribune that the High Court had imposed a six-month suspension on the proposed policy. The recent High Court ruling also observed that Naser Shariar Zayedi was the legal president of the Bangladesh Pharmaceutical Society (BPS).
Sources said Professor ABM Farook of Dhaka University was made president of BPS after the AL-led government came to power. As the BPS president, he was selected as a member of the sub-committee for drug policy review.
After receiving the court ruling, Zayedi wrote a letter to the Director General of DGDA to incorporate him as BPS president and review the proposed drug policy.
A senior DGDA official told the Dhaka Tribune that the health ministry had been informed to incorporate Zayedi as the BPS president, but the ministry had denied to take the issue into cognisance.
The 2008 election manifesto of the Awami League promised to formulate “an appropriate pharmaceutical policy to bring self-sufficiency in the production of medicines of an international standard and to promote their export and to take effective measures for education in traditional medicine and for the improvement of its quality”.
In 2011, a 14-member committee led by the director general of the DGDA was formed with an aim to come up with a time-befitting, pro-welfare, and acceptable drug policy. The committee was also tasked with reviewing the National Drug Policy 1982 and the National Drug Policy of 2005, and setting out recommendations for the latest one.
Sources in the DGDA said the committee comprising lawmakers, pharmacists, doctors, pharmaceutical company representatives and university professors finalised and submitted its recommendations to the ministry in September 2012.
Dhaka Tribune has learnt that the proposed policy includes a list of all essential drugs, by bringing all drug manufacturers allopathic, homeopathic, ayurvedic, unani and kaviraji under one umbrella policy.
The proposed policy also recommended not allowing companies to manufacture all kinds of drugs in order to prevent the illegal production of fake, adulterated and substandard drugs. There were also recommendations for including representatives from the consumers and prescribers in the Drug Pricing Committee of DGDA.
Seeking anonymity, some members of the drug policy committee said the proposal prepared by them would be acceptable to all and would be instrumental in stopping the manufacture and sales of fake, adulterated and substandard drugs.
They accused a vested quarter of continuously pressuring the government and heavily bribing the officials concerned to make sure that the policy remained in the dark.
When contacted, Selim Barami, member secretary of the drug policy updating committee, refused to comment in detail.
Sources in the DGDA alleged pharmaceutical companies of increasing the prices of drugs mostly on their whims, based on an executive order of the health ministry in 1994, which gave the manufacturers the right to fix the prices of all drugs except for 117 essential items.