Medicine market heats up

The government is expanding the list of essential medicines. The number of drugs on the list has increased from 135 to 295, and all of them will have to be sold at prices fixed by the government.

Although the decision has caused some dissatisfaction among pharmaceutical industry owners, health experts believe it will reduce the burden of medical expenses and keep treatment affordable for the general public.

The updated list of essential medicines was approved at a meeting of the Advisory Council on 8 January. The meeting also approved a medicine pricing policy. At a press briefing the same day, Professor Md Sayedur Rahman, Special Assistant to the Chief Adviser, said that 135 medicines had been added to the essential medicines list, bringing the total to 295. Prices of these medicines will be set by the government. He said the medicines on the list would meet the primary healthcare needs of 80 per cent of the population and would be applicable in treating around 80 per cent of common diseases in the country.

He added that a task force and a committee had been formed to update the essential medicines list and formulate the pricing policy. The task force and committee held separate meetings with various stakeholders, including drug experts, pharmaceutical manufacturers, public health specialists, representatives and advisers of the World Health Organisation, and researchers, and finalised the list and policy based on their recommendations.

Two-thirds of the country’s healthcare expenditure is spent on medicines. The initiative was taken to ease the financial burden on people, and all steps were carried out in line with internationally recognised practices and World Health Organisation guidelines.

Commenting on the issue, Professor Syed Abdul Hamid of the Institute of Health Economics at the University of Dhaka said that many pharmaceutical companies had lost interest in producing and marketing essential medicines because the government had not regularly revised drug prices. With prices remaining unchanged, companies focused on so-called IP (indicative price) medicines, whose prices they could set themselves. Doctors also tended to prescribe those medicines more frequently. As a result, low-cost essential medicines became scarce in the market, forcing ordinary people to buy relatively more expensive drugs.

He said that once formula-based pricing is implemented under the new policy, essential medicines will return to the market and be available at comparatively lower prices, directly benefiting the public. “The aim of the policy is to ensure that companies do not incur losses, while also preventing excessive profits,” he said. “Pharmaceutical companies will make profits, but these will be regulated.” He also believes the system will reduce aggressive marketing by drug companies, as any additional marketing costs will have to be borne from their own profits, with no scope to recover them by raising prices.

Meanwhile, Secretary General of the Bangladesh Association of Pharmaceutical Industries and Managing Director of Delta Pharma, Md Zakir Hossain, told media that the ministry had not held any discussions with the industry regarding the pricing of essential medicines. Instead, he said, industry representatives themselves had requested meetings with the pricing subcommittee to present their proposals. He added that while they had seen several media reports, they had yet to receive any official information on which medicines had been included in the essential list or what pricing policy had been adopted.