High prices of medicines
Tuesday, 5 August 2008
FOR the past few years, the newspapers and the electronic media have given extensive coverage to the price hike of essentials. We do not understand whether the media thinks that medicine is also an essential item. Otherwise how they could remain silent over, or largely indifferent to, this issue? It is true that the prices of essential food items have registered phenomenal increases in the recent months. But the prices of medicines have also leapt up silently, but sharply.
In some cases, the prices of medicines of various categories have increased by over 60 per cent in the past one year. The most disturbing part of it is that the sellers at the pharmacies are charging prices, much higher than those printed on the labels of medicines. This clearly indicates that there is no effective regulatory mechanism to prevent this free-style price fixation. Not only life saving drugs, some common medicines have become pricier these days.
There is hardly any reason for this sharp rise. May be the medicine retailers are just capitalizing on the situation because of lax price control mechanism in the country. There is no monitoring of the market and no control from anywhere. The health ministry, or, if we specifically say the drug administration, perhaps decided that they would allow the retailers or the companies to mint money as much as they could.
When the rising food price may result in the creation of a large malnourished group among population, the high medicine prices may also leave a large section of sick people without treatment. We would expect that it would keep a close watch on the price-movements of medicines in the retail market and try to have a depth idea about the production process, the costs of raw materials and the system of fixing the prices of the items. In the name of free market economy, the government cannot allow any free-style business by a certain section.
Rezwan Khan
Uttara,
Dhaka
In some cases, the prices of medicines of various categories have increased by over 60 per cent in the past one year. The most disturbing part of it is that the sellers at the pharmacies are charging prices, much higher than those printed on the labels of medicines. This clearly indicates that there is no effective regulatory mechanism to prevent this free-style price fixation. Not only life saving drugs, some common medicines have become pricier these days.
There is hardly any reason for this sharp rise. May be the medicine retailers are just capitalizing on the situation because of lax price control mechanism in the country. There is no monitoring of the market and no control from anywhere. The health ministry, or, if we specifically say the drug administration, perhaps decided that they would allow the retailers or the companies to mint money as much as they could.
When the rising food price may result in the creation of a large malnourished group among population, the high medicine prices may also leave a large section of sick people without treatment. We would expect that it would keep a close watch on the price-movements of medicines in the retail market and try to have a depth idea about the production process, the costs of raw materials and the system of fixing the prices of the items. In the name of free market economy, the government cannot allow any free-style business by a certain section.
Rezwan Khan
Uttara,
Dhaka