Despite launch of a massive crackdown, dozens of brands of unapproved, fake and unregistered medicines of different categories including aphrodisiac, Allopathic, Unani and herbal are still available in the market.
This was stated by Patients Rights Forum Chairman Dr Noor in an exclusive talk with APP on Sunday. He said that mostly such brands belonged to aphrodisiac medicines, which were smuggled from India and China. At least 30 brands of such medicines including Viagra, Black Cobra, Cialis and many other such brands were available in the market. ‘A big market of Rs 3.76 billion consists of aphrodisiac drugs. Besides it, a large number of nutrauceutical (food supplements), herbal, cosmetics medicines, ayurvedic medicines, Unani medicines, Siddah medicines, homeopathic medicines, bio-chemic medicines and Tibbi medicines are also being sold in market openly without any registration from the Drug Regulation Authority’, he added.
Moreover, there was no check on prices of these medicines. The owners of companies of these medicines were minting money. There was no online data of prices from any pharmaceutical company to check rates of any medicines being marketed in the country. Dr Noor suggested the government to order all pharmaceutical companies to provide data of drugs prices online to protect the rights of consumers.
Similarly, mushroom growth of poor class cosmetics including whitening creams production by the unregistered companies may create skin diseases as they have not quality certificate from the Pakistan Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (PCSIR), a report said.
