The Terminator @the88terminator - Twitter Profile

about 6 hours ago

Many of those medicines are not available in the market. No one will manufacture them at a loss. Poor people are selling their homesteads and becoming destitute. Ramiz Uddin, over sixty, suffers from high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and other complications. He has to buy four to five thousand taka worth of medicine every month. His wife Asma is also unwell. Husband and wife are trapped in the cycle of hospitals and drugs. News that the essential-medicine price list has been cancelled has deepened their worry. Middle-class families are in great hardship. They cannot ask anyone for help. They have to sell land, take loans and debts, and sell whatever they can just to eat and survive. Money is extremely hard for families like theirs. In 1994 the government prepared a list of 117 essential drugs. At the beginning of this year the interim government raised it to 297. This month the present government cancelled that list, so the market has returned to the 1994 arrangement. In pharmacies at Shahbagh, Mitford and Moghbazar, many government-priced medicines cannot be found. Ampicillin is not there. Benzyl penicillin is not there. More than half the medicines are not even on the market. The pharmaceutical industry association says companies will not produce anything at a loss. Some medicines that do appear come in illegally from abroad, and consumers still pay high prices. Their position is that the government should make a national essential-drug list and make it available—that is the government’s job. They will manufacture only if there is a profit. With price-setting now directly in companies’ hands, open-market chaos continues. The same generic is sold by one company for twenty taka and by another for sixty. Terbinafine is the same story. Sellers say that if a fixed price list existed, every company would have to sell at the same price. Buyers fear they will have to purchase medicine at much higher prices in future. The Directorate General of Drug Administration says work on a new list is under way and prices will not jump overnight. Experts say the list should never have been dropped overnight. They believe the companies’ association pressured the government, which cancelled it without further thought. In an open market, syndicates raise prices instead of competition, and sharp price increases will follow. They have called on the government to manufacture essential medicines under its own management and ensure public availability. For a patient, medicine means the fight to stay alive. Many families are ruined paying for long-term treatment. When availability and prices fall into chaos, ordinary people pay the price. The question remains how far the state can control the medicine market to protect patients. Commodity prices keep rising. Vegetables, fish and meat are on fire. Yet Tareq’s government remains busy with the Mecca deal. The economy is collapsing. Hundreds of factories have shut because of the gas and electricity crisis. They stay occupied kicking ordinary people in the stomach. There is little need to speak of law and order, because there is no law. Inside the country, BNP extortion and Jamaat militancy continue. On average ten people die every day. There is a food crisis. Two million people have become jobless. Only two years ago, during Sheikh Hasina’s time, many countries envied Bangladesh. Today the rise of militancy inside this state—Al-Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Taiba, JMB, Jaga, Nine, pressure-cooker bombs—has turned the country into a safe haven for Islamic militancy since Tareq Rahman became prime minister. This is the continuation of Yunus’s system of rule. @MAarafat71 @harunalrashid73 @MiluHRahman @USAmbIndia @IngloriousBhere @AmyMek @ImtiazMadmood @LauraLoomer @sidhant @deepscribble @PMOIndia #MedicineInCrisis #CurruptionGovernment #BangladeshUnderMilitants

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