Pharma Veterans

Doing Pharma Business in Pakistan – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #867 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #867 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans aims to share knowledge and wisdom from Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Antoni Shkraba Credit: Suzy Hazelwood Credit: Tima Miroshnichenko There are two countering narratives on the matter of ease of doing business in Pakistan. One view is that it is quite easy to do business here because the implementation of regulations is weak; the other view is that it is quite difficult to do business here because the regulations are adverse and business-unfriendly, and corruption among officials is rampant. The second view is more factual. Pharma business in Pakistan is highly regulated at all stages, with regulations aimed at policing and control, rather

Analysis of DRAP Performance – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #866 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #866 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans aims to share knowledge and wisdom from Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Thirdman Credit: Zakir Rushanly Credit: Zakir Rushanly This blogpost partakes from a June 2022 article by Shahid Mehmood of PIDE, published in Munich Personal RePEc Archive. Link at the end. DRAP – Drug Regulatory Authority Pakistan is the regulatory body for regulating the pharma industry, and it is not always straightforward to analyze the performance of a regulator. Indirectly, the status and performance of pharma industry in any country reflects the performance of its regulator. It is also true that the industry and regulator have a love-hate relationship; they detest one a

Global Drug Pricing Practices and Pakistan – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #865 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #865 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans aims to share knowledge and wisdom from Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: CDC Credit: Los Mortes Crew Credit: MART Production This blogpost partakes from an excellent article by ZUD Babar, published in Journal of Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice. Link at the end. The medicines pricing policies of country should cover the following objectives. a. To ensure access to effective, safe, and quality assured affordable medicines for all, b. To establish fair medicines pricing mechanisms that can improve access, c. To support the pharmaceutical industry. It is also important to understand the global medicines pricing setup.  Global Medi

Drug Sales Channels – Drug Pricing in Pakistan – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #864 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #864 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans aims to share knowledge and wisdom from Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Ana Sofia Bustamante Credit: Jose Ismael Espinola Credit: World Sikh Organization of Canada We have seen drug pricing in relation to government policies, its historical perspective, and the controversies. It would now be instructive to understand drug sales channels and how these may impact the drug pricing for the consumers. Drug Sales Channels The channels are distributors, wholesalers, and retail pharmacies, each of whom gets a certain percentage as service charges. Since the maximum selling price of a drug is fixed by DRAP already, these percentages are de

Controversies – Drug Pricing in Pakistan – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #863 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #863 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans aims to share knowledge and wisdom from Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Nataliya Viatkevich Credit: Polina Tankilevitch Credit: Anna Shvets Drug Pricing Policy 2018, which is the most recent and current policy for regulating drug prices, stipulated that the pharma companies would be able to increase prices every year automatically, based on inflation data – CPI, issued by the government and as provided in the policy. However, in early 2019, DRAP amended the policy unilaterally to take back its control over drug pricing. This was done after public outcry over price increases and ongoing debate about affordable healthcare. Kabeer Dawani s

Medicines Pricing in Pakistan - History – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #862 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #862 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans aims to share knowledge and wisdom from Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: JESHOOTS Credit: Maxim Goncharenok Credit: Tara Winstead Human welfare directly relates to health. There is a positive relationship between a population’s health and economic development of a country. An important component of public health is access to quality medicines, as it accounts for a significant portion of health expenditure. For the same reason, Pakistan is among those countries where drug prices are fixed and regulated by the government. There are other reasons for this exercise also, more important of which is the political mileage that the government wan

Healthcare Delivery in Conflict Zones – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #861 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #861 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans aims to share knowledge and wisdom from Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Gaza - Credit: MSF Gaza - Credit: MSF Sudan - Credit: MSF Martin Griffiths, UN Relief Chief tweeted on Sunday 15 October at 6.15PM. “The specter of death is hanging over #Gaza. With no water, no power, no food and no medicine, thousands will die.” Israeli Prime Minister’s office has said more than 1400 people have been killed in Israel since Hamas’s offensive on October 7. Meanwhile, 2450 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli bombings on Gaza. EU leaders have jointly and unanimously backed Israel’s right to defend itself in line with humanitarian and international law. “The

Family Businesses Across Regions – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #860 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #860 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans aims to share knowledge and wisdom from Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Cliff Booth Credit: Elina Fairytale Credit: Greta Hoffman Credit: Paul Efe This blogpost partakes from INSEAD article by Alexandra von Stauffenberg and Claudia Zeisberger. Link at the end. A business may be defined as Family Business in which two or more family members operate the company, and the majority of ownership or control lies within a family.  90% businesses start as family business, as per the definition above. Family businesses also account for 70% of GDP in the global economy and 60% of global employment. When a family starts a business, they aspire to make it b

AVASTIN Injection Debacle – An Objective Analysis – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #859 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #859 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans aims to share knowledge and wisdom from Veterans for the benefit of Community at large. Pharma Veterans Blog is published by Asrar Qureshi on  WordPress, the top blog site. Please email to asrar@asrarqureshi.com for publishing your contributions here. Credit: Tima Miroshnichenko Credit: Pakistan Today Credit: MART Production Off-Label Drug Use “Off-label drug use involves prescribing medications for an indication, or using a dosage or dosage form, that has not been approved by the FDA. Since the FDA does not regulate the practice of medicine, OLDU has become common”, says National Institute of Health, USA.  Off-label drug use is based on practice and experience and may even be supported by some clinical studies. However, large scale clinical trials and their review by a regulatory authority is missing. The off-l