The health sector is riddled with various crises seriously affecting the public health. The medicine market offers us a grim and melancholy picture of a hopeless mess we are in as we see that common antibiotics are losing efficacies, cartels and weak regulations are pushing life –saving medicines out of the reach of the patients, market is glutted with spurious and fake medicines, and above all too high prices of medicines for the common man.
The World Health Organisation(WHO) warned that infections once easily curable with conventional antibiotics are now becoming untreatable. Physicians fear that in the coming years, antibiotic resistance will make even common infections dangerously difficult to treat. Experts predict that by 2050, antibiotic resistance may reach 70 percent worldwide, threatening to reverse decades of medical progress. According to the international science journal ‘ Nature’, nearly 10 percent antibiotics sold in Dhaka are counterfeit ,adulterated or of substandard quality. Researchers say the situation is even worse outside Dhaka . In some cases, fake tablets made from flour and starch are found on sale. Consumers complain that the government has not shown any robust vigilance to stop this evil practice. There has been no instance so far of anyone being sentenced to life imprisonment under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, which includes a provision for life imprisonment for manufacturing or selling counterfeit medicines. Medicines which are in high demand , particularly gastric medicines and antibiotics, are widely counterfeited across the country
Across Bangladesh soaring medicine prices are pushing thousands of families to the brink, forcing many patients to delay ,abandon or never begin treatment at all. Many cancer deaths occur because patients either never start treatment or discontinue it midway largely due to financial hardship. Local pharmaceutical companies have met about 95 percent of cancer drug demand. Yet a critical question remains if most of the cancer medicines are now manufactured locally and enjoy tax and duty exemptions-why then prices still spiral out of control. According to experts, the answer lies in weak government regulation and dominance of the powerful pharmaceutical syndicates. Such high prices bring unrestrained profit-making for local manufacturers.
In august this year the government announced plans to fix prices for 260 essential medicines. The decision, however, remains unimplemented. The poor patients find it too difficult to procure medicine with abnormally high prices. Just as medicine prices have soared beyond common people’s reach, the trading of counterfeit medicines has also expanded rapidly. Differentiating genuine medicines from fake ones has become extremely difficult.
Sale of spurious medicines is sparking growing concerns among patients and physicians alike. Many doctors have stopped prescribing certain drugs altogether. One such drug is albumin injection, which is commonly used to increase plasma volume in patients following major surgery or serious trauma. Report has it that the market is glutted with fake albumin injections.
The wide spread of counterfeit and substandard medicines is a serious threat to public health. People are not only being deceived after spending their hard-earned money, but their suffering is mounting and many are even dying as a result. Doctors say fake medicines harm health in two ways- immediate and long term. Fake medicines cause new complications in patients over time.
The fake medicines pose an extreme threat to public health and we hope, the government must take stringent action tro stop manufacturing and sale of fake medicine to alleviate public suffering.
