A meeting of the federal cabinet sub-committee was held under the chairmanship of Finance Minister Senator Muhammad Aurangzeb, which was attended by Federal Health Minister Mustafa Kamal, Health Secretary and DRAP officials.
The meeting approved the prices of 52 new life-saving registered medicines. The approved medicines include cancer, diabetes, hemophilia and Parkinson’s medicines.
The final approval of the prices of the medicines will be given by the federal cabinet and after the approval of the federal cabinet, DRAP will issue an official notification of the prices. After the notification of the prices, the medicines can be legally sold in Pakistan.
The approved medicines also include the advanced cancer immunotherapy drug Trudeau, Trudeau is used to treat more than 20 types of cancer worldwide.
In addition, the approved medicines include nivolumab, dasatinib, meropenem and insulin.
In the meeting, the Ministry of Health stressed the need for immediate approval of prices due to the difficulties of patients and transparency and public interest in decisions on drug prices.
According to officials, due to the delay, patients were forced to take unregistered, smuggled and expensive imported medicines, while the decision will improve the availability of quality medicines and reduce dependence on illegal supplies.