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Drive against spurious drug makers hailed

Recorder report

LAHORE: Health Watch, a forum seeking quality control of foods and medicines, has expressed appreciation for the decision of the Drug Registration Board to launch a campaign against manufacturers of substandard and spurious drugs as well as declining registration of drugs which are imported in the finished form.

In a press release issued here on Thursday, Health Watch claimed that spurious drugs have turned into a parallel market in Pakistan. It hoped that import of only such medicines in finished form would have been stopped which are not manufactured locally.

Local manufacture of even newly developed drugs may not be possible in the initial stages until they achieve feasible level of sales and the local manufacturers develop technical know-how and the required modernisation to manufacture such drugs, the release added.

The Watch has appealed to the Chief Executive to place the matter of spurious and fake drugs, along with adulteration in items of human consumption, as one of his top priorities "because such killers of human beings and their accomplices deserve no less punishment than the terrorists."