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 contro...

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....

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...

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 gover...

Drug Prices Row – Important Points – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #831 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #831 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. Photo Credit: Karolina Grabowska Photo Credit: Anna Shvets Photo Credit: Polina Tankilevitch Drug Prices have been a cause for face-off between Pakistan Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (PPMA) and Drug Regulatory Authority Pakistan (DRAP) for quite some time. PPMA members continued to ask for price increase on the basis of continuous rise in the cost of inputs, partly due to rupee devaluation and partly due to increased cost of utilities, labor etc. DRAP and its predecessor Ministry of Health (MoH) sometimes agreed and sometimes did not. Across the board increase...

Pharmaceutical Industry Challenges Today – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #822 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #822 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by 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. Photo Credit: Pavel Danilyuk Photo Credit: Max Mishin Photo Credit: Tima Miroshnichenko The pharmaceutical industry faces several significant challenges in today's dynamic and complex landscape. These challenges have implications for research and development, regulatory compliance, market access, pricing, patient safety, and public perception. Here are some key challenges currently faced by the pharmaceutical industry, not just in Pakistan, but all over the world. Our market is different in the sense that we manufacture only generic products, and our R&D is ...

Entrepreneurship within the Pharma Industry – Part 4 – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #703 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #703 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by 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. Reasons for Failure – Continued…… We continue our discussion on entrepreneurship by the Pharma Industry employees. Employee Mindset Someone, who has been working as an employee for several years, develops a certain mindset. He is part of a team where work is divided, and responsibility is shared. Everyone does their job and goes home, leaving office worries behind. It is rare to get disturbed in off hours. Then there is possibility of annual leaves, casual leaves (which are taken mostly for casual reasons), and sick leaves (mostly availed as a matter...

Pakistan Pharma Industry SWOT – Part 52 – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #643 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #643 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by 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. Opening Note February 2022 marked my completing 47 years of working in Pharma Industry. Allah be praised. I am still working. My journey of near half century is also the journey of Pharma Industry in Pakistan. Great changes have occurred in this time and a lot could be written about it. In my blogs, which were started about four and a half years ago, I have covered several topics related to Pakistan Pharma Industry. This multi-part series is the SWOT – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats – Analysis of the Pharma Industry and propose strategies. EPILOGUE … II ...

Pakistan Pharma Industry SWOT – Part 20 – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #611 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #611 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by 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. Opening Note February 2022 marks my completing 47 years of working in Pharma Industry. Allah be praised. I am still working. The first half of my working career was spent in Multinational companies, and the latter half in the Local Pharma, making me well-versed with both innovators and generics markets. I also had the opportunity to work in business as well as operations.  My journey of near half century is also the journey of Pharma Industry in Pakistan. Great changes have occurred in this time and a lot could be written about it. In my blogs, which were started ...

Pakistan Pharma Industry SWOT – Part 4 – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #595 Dear Colleagues!  This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #595 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans welcome sharing of knowledge and wisdom by 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. Opening Note February 2022 shall mark my completing 47 years of working in Pharma Industry. Allah be praised. I am still working. The first half of my working career was spent in Multinational companies, and the latter half in the Local Pharma, making me well-versed with both innovators and generics markets. I also had the opportunity to work in business as well as operations.  My journey of near half century is also the journey of Pharma Industry in Pakistan. Great changes have occurred in this time and a lot could be written about it. In my blogs, which were star...