The Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan’s (DRAP) federal drug surveillance laboratory would soon start functioning in the country.
According to an official of DRAP, under reforms transformation strategy, the authority had been focused on four aspects, including registration, licensing, quality control and price control of medicines.
He said an international standard of registration was being developed in the country in order to make it at par with the standard of World Health Organisation (WHO) specific format called Committee on Trade and Development (CTD).
He said there would be international standard accredited central drug testing laboratory, while labs would also start working at the provincial level.
He said these laboratories would be pre-qualified from WHO in order to improve the credibility of these labs. So far, three levels had been achieved while pre-audit would start by the end of this year.
He added under WHO assessment scheme, DRAP would observe gaps and potentials while its transparency would be checked by WHO.
He said that after achieving this international standard, Pakistani pharmaceutical companies would be able to get the registration of their medicines from major countries’ authorities concerned.
He added with this achievement, Pakistani companies would be able to get membership of Pharmaceuticals Inspection Cooperation Scheme (PICS) which would help these companies for easy registration in every country of the world.
This step would help increasing figure of country’s medicines export which at present stands at the volume of Rs167 million against India’s figure of Rs20 billion and Bangladesh’s Rs1.8 billion.
He said that after joining PICS, not only country’s export would touch the highest figure in the export of medicines, but local pharmaceutical exporters—who were looking to export their products to less explored countries—would also achieve success.
He said that PICS would endorse Pakistani pharma companies as reliable exporters of quality medicine. This would help to improve the quality of local companies and people would get quality medicines.
He said that under drugs pricing policy, the government had strictly controlled the prices of drugs with regards to hardship cases. Under the policy, it was the prerogative of the government to fix the prices of those medicines that fall under hardship regime.