Missing drugs policy, a real foreign conspiracy - EDITORIAL

n and off for the past several years there had been news items in the media that the Government was going to bring in laws to implement the Senaka Bibile Medicinal Drugs Policy. However, it is ironic and surprising to note that the intended piece of legislation did not see the light of day despite the Government having a two-thirds majority in Parliament on the one hand and on the other with none among the twenty million people in the country being against such a move. 

The common opposition candidate for the forthcoming January 8 presidential election, Maithripala Sirisena who promised the country so many times as the Health Minister that the said piece of legislation would be brought in, has now broken the startling news that a certain person has collected Rs.2.5 million from each of the 400 pharmaceutical companies to block the Senaka Bibile policy from becoming a law. Before he broke away from the government on November 21, Mr. Sirisena had also revealed to the country that the draft of the said legislation had vanished from the Legal Draftsman’s office.

The allegation of bribery to suppress the Senaka Bibile policy has not been denied yet by the Government or the ruling United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA). But attempts are being made instead by the leaders of the government including the President to question the propriety of the former Health Minister who they say was not capable of protecting an important document, to hold the portfolio.

The former Health Minister may be a weak or irresponsible person in this regard, but the question that remains here is as to what happened to the document and whether the government is interested in getting it back. Also the question remains as to why a government that boasts of winning a thirty-year-long war and has pledged to turn the country into the Wonder of Asia has not been able to bring in such a law in the name of millions of innocent patients in the country for so long, despite it enjoying a two-thirds majority and the entire country endorsing it. 

Each of the nearly five million families in the country spends tens of thousands of rupees each year for medicinal drugs purely because they are usually available only in brand names instead of generic names. Even the healthiest family in the country would save thousands of rupees each year if medicines were available in generic names. Preventing them from purchasing drugs at lower prices by way of blocking these laws is a crime. And if somebody or some group has collaborated with more than 400 foreign pharmaceutical companies to prevent the Senaka Bibile policy from becoming a law that is definitely a foreign conspiracy, in contemporary terms.

The misplacement of the draft of the legislation was reported long ago. If the government had been serious enough in this regard and if a conspiracy of foreign companies with the collaboration of influential local politicians had not been hatched, as alleged by the common opposition candidate, the Government has to take action against the persons responsible, including the Minister, who the government leaders accuse is incapable of doing the job.  

On the other hand now the ball is on the Government’s court and it has to prove that nobody has taken a Rs.100 billion bribe from the pharmaceutical companies and the most appropriate way to do so is to implement the Senaka Bibile policy forthwith.