Increase in drug prices: Should it be like that?

The leading pharmaceutical companies are riding roughshod over the consumers as far are drug prices are concerned.
An extra-strong Paracetamol (a combination of paracetamol and caffeine) tablet, produced by these companies, now costs Tk 3.0.
For the last couple of years, the companies have been intermittently hiking prices of their products that are relatively on high demand. Following such hikes, the prices of a good number of drugs at the retail level have nearly doubled within a period of two years.
The mid-level pharmaceutical companies have not all fallen far behind. They, too, have hiked the prices of their products but not up to the extent of their big brothers in the trade.
According to a newspaper report, at least five leading pharmaceutical companies have increased the prices of nearly 200 widely consumed drugs between 50 and 60 per cent within a gap of one month. Paracetamol tablets, different types of anti-biotic medicines and paediatric syrups were also on the latest list of drugs that saw an upward adjustment of their prices. Even on Tuesday last, a leading company increased the price tags of a number of medicines. Others are likely to follow it very soon.
In the case of increase in drug prices, the large pharmaceutical companies do follow a certain mechanism, possibly, to avoid pubic attention. One of those companies, at first, hikes the prices of some of its selected products. And after a gap of few days, the fellow big companies follow suit.  
The pharmaceutical companies and their representative association list the hike in the prices of raw materials in the international market as the main factor that has forced them to go for repeated hikes in drug prices.
But whether their demand is justified or not or whether the hike enforced in the case of drug prices in recent times is compatible with the increase in raw material prices in the global market remains a subject of regulatory scrutiny.
But the role of the regulator, in this case, the ministry of commerce, appears to be both confusing and irrational.   
A media report quoting a reliable source has claimed that at a meeting of the committee on drug price fixation on June 30 last, the health secretary, who chaired the meeting, representative/s of pharmaceutical companies put forward a proposal to hike prices of their products. But the health secretary, reportedly, requested the companies not to hike drug prices at the 'fag end' of the present government's tenure. But the companies started hiking drug prices from the third week of last month (October).
The way drug manufacturers have been increasing their prices in recent times makes one to believe that the government, in fact, does not have any control over drug prices and the manufacturers concerned dictate their own terms.
But should it be like that, when the government's per capita allocation of fund for the health sector in the national budget remains highly inadequate? The actual per capita annual allocation on account of drugs and medicines, supplied to government health facilities, is not enough even to buy a strip of Paracetamol tablets.
Up to 90 per cent population of a country like Bangladesh, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), buy drugs and medicines through out-of-pocket payments, making medication the largest family expenditure after food item. High prices of medicines might force the poor to forego treatment or go into debt, it said.
The WHO has prepared a guideline on country pharmaceutical pricing policy for the governments to ensure availability of medicines at affordable prices to the peoples of low and middle-income countries. In the guideline, various methods and steps have been suggested to achieve this basic goal.
One has ample reasons to believe that the government has not made any single effort to implement the WHO guideline to help the poor who cannot afford even relatively cheap sub-standard medicines.  
The government while examining the relation between the recent hikes in the prices of medicines locally and the international prices of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) should also see whether the benefit of the appreciation of Taka has been passed on to the consumers by the pharmaceutical companies.
There is no denying that pharmaceutical companies are not charities and their owners have invested funds with the objective of making profits. But industry owners should not be oblivious of one ground reality, the buying capacity of the poor and the low income people. Diseases do not show any mercy to anyone for being poor. Rather the poor remain vulnerable to some common diseases that the rich, in most cases, can avoid because of their better and healthy life-style.
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