LAHORE: Despite the launch of massive crackdown against spurious medicines, dozens of smuggled brands of unapproved, fake and unregistered medicines of different categories, including aphrodisiac, allopathy, Unani and herbal are still available in market.
Sources associated with manufacturing of medicines revealed that aphrodisiacs of various brands are smuggled from India and China. At least 34 brands of such medicines are available in market. As per estimation a big market of Rs 3.76 billion belonged to aphrodisiac drugs. Besides these aphrodisiac medicines, a big number of food supplements, herbal, cosmetics medicines, Ayurvedic medicines, Unani medicines, Siddha medicines, homeopathic medicines, biochemic medicines and Tibi medicines are openly being sold in market without any registration from the Drug Regulation Authority.
It was learnt that there was not any system of monitoring of drug prices available. Unfortunately, there is no online data of prices from any pharmaceutical company to check rates of any medicine being marketed in the country. It was suggested to the government to order to all pharmaceutical companies to provide data of drug prices online to protect the rights of consumers.