ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: Parliamentary Secretary for National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination Dr. Darshan Thursday informed the National Assembly (NA) that the country was importing 376 registered medicines at present.
During the Question-hour session, Dr Darshan said these medicines were being imported in all provinces after clearance by various field offices of Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) situated at Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Peshawar and Quetta.
Dr. Darshan said these medicines may be imported multiple times in various consignments.
In a written reply, Minister for National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination Saira Afzal Tarar said that before the promulgation of DRAP Act, 2012 few medical devices were regulated under the Drug Act, 1976.
She said that with enactment of the DRAP Act all medical devices including surgical items have now been brought under regulation.
“The government has taken several steps to regulate the medical devices under medical devices rules, 2015 notified for licensing, registration, classification, import, export, labeling,” she added.
The minister said that phase-wise implementation plan has been provided in these rules in order to bring these medical devices under regulation and at the same time to ensure uninterrupted supply of these life saving medical devices to the patients.
Saira Afzal said that medical device board has also been constituted to initiate the process of licensing of importers and local manufacturers and registration of their medical devices.
To another question, she said that though Pakistan has made significant progress towards interruption of Polio virus during last 20 months, but the country has not been able to get rid of Polio as yet completely.
The minister said a country is declared to be Polio free only if during the last one year, it has neither reported any case of wild Polio virus nor any virus is isolated from environmental samples collected from sewerage as well as healthy children from the high risk populations.
Saira Afzal said that Pakistan has made tremendous progress on this front. Moreover, the number of Polio cases (WPV1) has also decreased significantly from over 20,000 per year in 1980s to only 15 so far in 2016.
She said Pakistan’s efforts for Zero Polio have been seriously hampered in the past because of inaccessibility to over 600,000 children in FATA as well as mega cities like Karachi and Peshawar due to militancy and the prevalent environment of insecurity including direct attacks on our Polio workers, a phenomenon that started happening from December 2012.
The minister said since the launch of operation Zarb-e-Azb and through effective coordination and support of our security agencies, the problem has now been resolved to a great extent. Resultantly after a huge upsurge of cases in 2014 (306), the programme was able to reduce the number of reported cases to 54 in 2015 (82% decline).
Saira Afzal said the momentum is being sustained in 2016 where 15 cases have been reported across Pakistan till date against 39 cases reported during the same time period in 2015.
Similarly, the proportion of positive environmental samples has also decreased from 38 percent in 2014 to 19 percent in 2015 and 9 percent in 2016 so far, the minister said.
She said the progress made by Pakistan under difficult circumstances is being widely appreciated at national and international forums including World Health Assembly, Independent Monitoring Board and Polio Oversight Board etc.
The minister said the virus has now been confined to small geographical areas in the last reservoirs of Karachi, Khyber-Peshawar and Quetta block.
“Continued and concerted national efforts are however, required to interrupt the Polio virus transmission within next few months by implementing National Emergency Action Plan 2016-17 approved by the Prime Minister,” she added.
Saira Afzal said the personal leadership and support of all respected members would be imperative to support the Polio eradication efforts in their respective constituencies during monthly campaigns from now till May 2017.
