Transnational pharmaceutical corporations which are among the biggest profit-making businesses in the world, do not give up easily in any country and they are not giving up in Sri Lanka though a new National Medicines Regulatory Authority was sworn in last Thursday and a gazette notification issued to that effect.

According to insiders the earlier Cosmetics Drugs and Devices Regulatory Authority (CDDRA) has now been dissolved in terms of a law passed unanimously by Parliament in March and a gazette notification issued last week. But up to yesterday the defunct CDDRA’s Chairman continues to remain in his big office at the Health Ministry though Health Minister Rajitha Senaratne informed him last week that the CDDRA has been dissolved and the National Medicines Regulatory Authority (NMRA) has taken its place. The insiders say the NMRA’s Chairman Prof. Lal Jayakody, head of the Department of Pharmacology in the Faculty of Medicine, is functioning in a small office at the Health Ministry while the relevant files and documents are still in the office of the former Chairman.

According to sources in the NMRA, the Chairman of the dissolved CDDRA or those working in collusion with him are allegedly planting stories in sections of the media alleging that the NMRA is making more than one thousand illegal appointments to its staff. Last week NMRA Chairman Prof. Jayakody and another member met the Elections Commissioner and briefed him on what had happened, as did Minister Senaratne. They said appointments to the NMRA were made before the announcement of the General Elections and the Elections Commissioner had said there was nothing illegal. As for the appointment of staff members, the NMRA explains it was recruiting the existing staff of the CDDRA and the National Drug Quality Assurance Laboratory. The NMRA said if any new staff members needed to be appointed that would be done after the General Elections on August 17.

The People’s Movement for the Rights of Patients and other health action groups yesterday appealed to President Maithripala Sirisena and Health Minister Senaratne that no one should be allowed to block the implementation of Prof. Senaka Bibile’s essential medicines concept. On this basis the NMRA is expected to review the record number of more than 15,000 drugs which are registered now and slash it to about 1000 in keeping with the Bibile principle. This will result in quality drugs being made available to the people at affordable prices with the Health Minister repeatedly assuring that the price reduction would range from 30 percent to 50 percent.

A PMRP spokesman said that health action groups were aware that agents of TNCs would try to dilute or derail the implementation of the new medicinal drugs policy and it was now evident they were trying to do it through some former authority.

Since the Bibile policy was withdrawn under pressure from the TNCs in 1976 Sri Lanka has gradually been increasing the number of drugs being imported. While the State Pharmaceutical Corporation imports low cost but good quality drugs under their generic names, private drug companies are known to be importing thousands of non-essential drugs, some of them under highly expensive brand names. In addition racketeers are known to be sending hired smugglers to India or Pakistan to bring back what is known as “baggage drugs”, meaning hundreds of varieties of counterfeit drugs which contain substances like wheat flour. On Wednesday the Consumer Affairs Authority arrested some suspects who were selling more than 30 varieties of such counterfeit drugs. Pharmacies are alleged to be buying these counterfeit drugs at low prices and therefore some patients who have prescriptions for antibiotics when they are suffering from influenza or other ailments, face the risk of getting counterfeit antibiotics with wheat flour inside. They take the counterfeit drug three times a day for about a week and end up feeling worse with upset stomachs and other ailments.

The long-delayed legislation to implement the Senaka Bibile policies was unanimously passed by Parliament in March to prevent racketeers from exploiting unsuspecting patients. Agents of TNCs and other racketeers cannot and must not be allowed to play with the lives of millions of people.