Despite decrease in inflation, cost of prescription drugs still remains out of reach of people: GMOA

by Sanath Nanayakkare

Although the rate of inflation has reduced, the cost of prescription drugs still remains out of reach of the masses and the Ministry of Health is not intervening to rectify this situation, Dr. Chamil Wijesinghe , Spokesman of the Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA) said yesterday.

“The government says that the economy has stabilized and we see that the core inflation indices which reflect the underlying inflation in the economy have edged down. Sri Lanka which ranked among the top 5 countries with highest food price inflation has come out of it.

We see some favorable trends. Prices of goods and services have dropped somewhat. Price of fuel has decreased. But we don’t see that the price of medicine has reduced in line with that trend. We still hear grievances every day about private hospitals exploiting the patients with high charges. When the dollar liquidity crunch was acute and the LKR fell to its lowest of all time, the prices of medicine rose rapidly and private hospital charges also shot up. But now with the easing of economic indices, those prices and charges need to be regulated by the authorities in order to provide relief to the people, but we don’t see the Health Ministry is intervening to do so,” he said.

“We can’t still provide prescription medicine to the patients due to lack of medicines at the hospitals. There is also a lack of equipment needed for surgeries. From the National Hospital to rural hospitals, the entire health system is at great risk. All this has put pressure on the ordinary people of the country. Therefore, we urge the authorities to pay attention to this pressing issue,” he said.