As low-quality drugs are being produced and distributed among the countries in the region and it has become a lucrative business, we need special laboratories to accredit drugs. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has stated this in his manifesto, Health Services Director General Dr. Anil Jasinghe has said.
Addressing the ‘World Antibiotic Awareness Week’ held at the Water’s Edge in Battaramulla yesterday, he said that the National Medicines Regulatory Authority (NMRA) at times disregard the needs of the health sector and the Health Department,
According to Dr. Jasinghe, before 2015 it was Cosmetics, Devices and Drugs Authority (CCDA) which registered drugs and carried out relevant tasks. It was under the Director General of Health Services. But after 2015, the NMRA was set up as an independent body and it started to carry out the task independently, at times disregarding health sector needs.
Dr. Jasinghe said the world has not produced any new antimicrobials and Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) can stop the world one day if the countries do not address the issue immediately. In developing countries like Sri Lanka, there are several hundreds of brands of drugs and it is the pharmacist or dispenser who decides what to offer to the patient. He or she offers the drug from which they could earn the maximum profit.
Dr. Jasinghe said that general practitioners should also discipline themselves and they should notunnecessarily prescribe antibiotics.
The programme was held on the theme ‘Combating antimicrobial resistance: The importance of infection prevention and control, optimal use of antimicrobials and surveillance of antimicrobial resistance’.
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