Price of Pharmaceutical Drugs Will be Reduced

Minister of Health, Nutrition and Indigenous Medicine, Rajitha Senaratne responding to a question by Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) MP Nalinda Jayatissa in Parliament yesterday,  said that the prices of pharmaceutical drugs will be reduced in two weeks time.

Minister Rajitha  said people only want to get high quality drugs at a low price.

Prof. Senaka Bibile’s Pharmaceutical Act was also drafted to reduce the price of drugs. He said that the prices of some drugs remained very high due to the huge drug mafia prevailed in the country. The importation of drugs without following proper tender procedures had been resulted in this mafia.

“But, now we are in a position of reducing the cost of drugs by taming the country’s drug mafia by importing quality medicines at affordable prices from countries like Russia. A single consignment of cancer medicines which was quoted at dollars 285,000 by the usual suppliers earlier was recently purchased at dollars 165.000 recently.

One supplier who quoted dollars 30 for a tablet later quoted only three dollars when a supplier from a socialist country quoted a much lower price. He said that Prof. Senaka Bibile also pointed out that drugs must be imported from socialist countries at low prices.

Further he said although socialist countries have no socialism now, they maintain the former standards by providing high quality drugs at a fair price.