Kabul (SW): A recent survey has revealed patients in war-ravaged Afghanistan have been consuming substandard and smuggled medicine for years now.
Afghanistan’s Independent Joint Anti-Corruption Monitoring and Evaluation Committee (MEC) told reports in Kabul that half of all medicine available on the Afghan market has either been smuggled into the country or had been produced under sub-standard conditions in neighbouring Pakistan.
Eva Jolly, head of this committee and a member of the European Parliament, stressed upon the need for immediate reforms in import contract issuing regime. “There are over 44 steps to get an import license, which means as many occasions for corruption and bribe”, she noted.
The study found Afghanistan’s pharmaceutical market’s annual financial worth to be around $ 800 million. “More than half of these are illicitly imported drugs from companies that are not delivering good pharmaceuticals”, she added.
Pharmaceutical trade is a lucrative business in Afghanistan as most of the medicine brought in from Pakistan has the price tag of Rupees on it while traders in the Afghan capital Kabul, other major cities and far away villages sell them against Afghanis (Afghanistan’s currency), which is almost double in value against the Pakistani Rupee.
Another opportunity for exploitation comes with the English and Urdu text and Gregorian calendar dates on them. All three of these are not common in Afghanistan where Pashto and Dari are the main languages and Solar Hijri calendar is functional hence many a times expired medicine too are sold with ease.
The watchdog termed Afghanistan as a “heaven for pharmaceutical smugglers” who by exploiting the war and instability here been dumping all sorts of fake, expired and substandard medicine for decades.
There are around 450 foreign pharmaceutical companies registered with the Ministry of Public Helath (MoPH), over 300 of them are said to be Pakistani firms who produce medicine “exclusively for Afghanistan”, i.e. their products are not allowed to be sold even in Pakistan where they produce it.
This flood of poor quality drugs causes wider health problems for the Afghan people; in addition to ineffective treatment of illnesses, the substandard drugs often cause dangerous side-effects. The poor standard of local drugs and healthcare forces many Afghans who can afford it to travel abroad for medical treatment.
To some extent, Afghan themselves are to be blamed for this dilemma. The MEC officials said among the importers include powerful individuals, ministers and member of the parliament who cared mostly for fast profits than anything else.
Afghanistan’s Pharmaceutical Law of 2007 was criticized for lowering down the standards as the country was in dire need of medicine back then. “There should now be a national list of pharmaceutical companies, which should be revised every three years since science is changing and evolving”, Eva Jolly said.
The matter of lack of competence at the ministry level was also raised as an obstacle in way of improvement and uplift.
“We recommend two things, people responsible for this situation should be investigated, prosecuted and we should change the rules to allow original and good quality medicines to be imported”, Eva Jolly concluded.
On his part, Muhammad Yasin Usmani, the Afghan member of the Independent Joint Anti-Corruption Monitoring and Evaluation Committee (MEC), said the country also lacked proper laboratories at the borders to stop the flow of counterfeit drugs.
He added that the operators at some of the existing border labs manipulate the medicine tests sometimes in order to get bribe.
ENDS
