Can’t find your medicine? Pharmaceutical firms threaten to protest from January 5

Pharmaceutical firms in Pakistan have threatened to start boycotts from January 5 after growing shortage of medicines and other life-saving drugs and to put pressure on the government to resolve the sector’s problems.

After the federal government introduced policies to increase prices of raw material, several medicines including insulin, are now unavilable in markets.
According to the Pakistan Drug Lawyer Forum President Noor Meher, 91% of raw materials used to create these medicines are imported to Pakistan. He said that stocks of new medicines are sitting at Karachi port and Lahore Dry Port, however government authorities are not providing clearance to deliver these to stores. Meher revealed that the dire situation has now pushed pharmaceutical workers to protest on streets to demand the government’s attention for the sector’s problems.

In October 2022, healthcare organization GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) announced that it was shutting down the production of Panadol tablets, Panadol Extra Tablets and Cildren’s Panadol Liquid Range in Pakistan after suffering financial losses.

In a letter to PM’s Principal Secretary Syed Tauqir Shah, the CEO of GSK Consumer Healthcare Pakistan, Farhan Haroon had written:

“We are incurring heavy financial losses on the production of the entire Panadol range due to an increase in the price of their raw ingredients and in the absence of due approval by the federal government on the recommendation of Drug Pricing Committee of Drug Regulatory Committee of Pakistan. Due to these challenges, manufacturing of Panadol range on negative margins is unsustainable and despite exhaustive efforts of the company to mitigate the issue through dialogue, the situation is now beyond our control, compelling us to declare force majeure.”