The government hospitals are unable to purchase the required modern drugs from the private parties as 70 per cent of their allocated money is spent for a limited number of essential medicines from the state-owned Essential Drugs Company Limited (EDCL).
According to a hospital source, out of over 1,400 generic drugs locally available, the hospitals can purchase a maximum of 200 items from the government-owned company without tenders.
As a result, the hospitals cannot buy the necessary modern drugs from the private parties through tender process and so the poor patients fail to get new generic medicines, he said.
Some hospital sources in and outside Dhaka said as there is mandatory government order, the hospitals are bound to purchase the major items from the EDCL. Thus a good number of drugs remain unused every year.
The sources said drug requirements are prepared by the hospital physicians, but they care less about it as they usually prescribe patients to buy those from outside the hospitals.
They said the poor patients are deprived of the latest medicines in two ways: firstly, the hospital authorities do not have enough money to buy drugs from private parties and secondly, the physicians are motivated by the private drug companies' agents.
An official at Dhaka Medical College and Hospital, requesting anonymity, said: "We get fund to purchase drugs but there is government order to buy at least 70 per cent of the total purchase from the EDCL."
The official said due to such binding every year unnecessary medicines are being purchased by the government allocated fund but a certain number of medicines remain unused across the country.
Several sources, requesting anonymity, said most of the new generation drugs are not included in the government supplies while the physicians' tendency is to prescribe new generation drugs motivated by the pharmaceutical companies' people.
The physicians, during hospital duty, prescribe brand names of new generation drugs instead of the available generic names supplied by the government, they said.
Due to such tendency of the physicians at public hospitals, the patients go to stores outside hospitals in many cases, they added.
As per the government's procurement process, every year the hospital directors prepare lists of drug requirements with the help of the doctors in-charge of wards but in most of the cases the requirements sent to the DGHS (Directorate General of Health Services) are inappropriate.
Another source at a public hospital in Dhaka said: "We do not get many important drugs while there are a good number of unnecessary date-expired drugs in the hospital stores."
He suggests that to solve the problem either the government can include new drugs in the essential lists or the order of mandatory 70 per cent drugs purchase can be relaxed with allocation of more money.
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