Activities

TRAINING SEMINARS During the year 2006, Pharma team delivered number of training sessions both in-house as well as outside. A few of them are A training workshop on “Rational use of drugs” at Gandhara Homoeopathic medical college Wah cantt. Presentation on “Drug prices in globalized World” in international pharmacy conference and exhibition, Lahore. Presentation in journalists training session at Hamdrad University. Conducted an in-house discussion forum on “Dangerous Drugs”. Presented Unethical Marketing study in first International Health expo 2006.

DRUGS TESTING Comparative testing of medicine has been a hard nut to crack for last about four years. We contacted number of laboratories including university research labs as well as private labs but weren’t able to find a partner who could test the drug samples for us and stand with it. During this whole period we were able to get different brands of only one drug ‘Ofloxacin’ tested. Number of individuals and organizations showed interest and agreed initially but later they used to refuse for unknown reasons. Having seen all this, we decided to set up a lab of our own, where we could test medicine for organizations as well as general consumers as and when required. We started the struggle and were finally able to convince the German donor GTZ to provide us with one such lab. GTZ got our point in its spirit and was excited enough to provide us with two labs instead of one, so that we could extend the services to a larger scale. Order was placed at the end of 2006 and we have recently received both of the laboratories’ equipment. Labs will be functional very soon as these are very smart, efficient and easy to use and don’t require much formalities.

NDP/DRUGS ACT AMENDMENTS All pharmaceutical related regulations/statutes (NDP, Drug Act etc.) are reviewed from pro-poor and consumer’s interests and amendments advocated. We advocate to have selected health and consumer legislation and policies implemented and monitoring systems in place at relevant levels (through strategies involving consumers, elected representatives, CSO coalitions, government policy makers, providers, donor agencies etc). It was this efficient and effective campaigning that made government make amendments in National Medicine Policy (NMP) and Drugs Act both. MoH invited suggestions and recommendations from TN, which were compiled with consumer’s interest in focus, and were shared with the ministry.

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