The Ministry of National Health Services (NHS), responding to a letter by Transparency International Pakistan (TIP), on Wednesday said the federal government’s decision to allow private imports of Covid-19 vaccines was a “deliberate policy tool”.
NHS Secretary Aamir Ashraf Khawaja, in the letter, said the government allowed private imports so those population segments which were not part of the government’s priority inoculation campaign could be catered to.“It was a well-concerned decision of the federal government to allow the private sector to import vaccine as the national vaccination priorities favoured the healthcare workers and the elderly, involving some lag in reaching other segments of the society.”
Khawaja said in the letter that initially there had been no prices set for the imported vaccines since there was no reference price available according to the law but later, a provision of the Drug Pricing Policy under was applied to Covid vaccines “to keep a check on prices instead of leaving it solely to free market dynamics”.“It may be added that the government is fixing the maximum retail price,” Khawaja said in the letter, adding that this meant competition and free market dynamics could potentially reduce the price from the maximum retail price.The government’s response comes two days after Transparency International Pakistan, in a letter penned by Justice (r) Nasira Iqbal, had asked the prime minister to review the policy of allowing private imports and cancel it altogether, as across the globe, governments were procuring vaccines and administering it to their citizens for free. The TIP letter had noted that Pakistan being one of the first countries to allow the private sector to import and sell Covid-19 vaccines would provide a window of corruption as there were possibilities that the government’s vaccines would be sold to private hospitals…
Source: dawn.com
