Government has allocated Rs. 45 billion to import necessary medicine for next year. Last year the allocation for this purpose was only Rs. 35 billion.
This was expressed by the Minister of Health, Nutrition, and Indigenous Medicine Rajitha Senarathne on Wednesday (7th Dec.) at a ceremony held to introduce five new domestically-produced medicines to the market by the State Pharmaceuticals Corporation in Colombo. These medicines included Paracetamol, anti-biotic, and medicine for diabetes, where they were produced at the SPC Rathmalana factory.
“Upto now, the SPC manufactures 54 medicines to provide them to the medical supply division of the Health Ministry. Hereafter those new five medicines will be issued to the market under the PMC brand”, said the Chairman of SPC Dr. Sayuru Samrasundara.
Addressing further, the Minister Senarathne said that he intended to manufacture an 80 percent of the drug requirement in Sri Lanka by mid 2018. Rest of the requirement will be manufactured in 2019. Over 20 local and foreign companies have signed agreements with SPC in this regard. According to him, the writing of prescriptions with the brand name will be banned after the quality Laboratory by the Chinese government is established in Sri Lanka in the future. They should be written with the drug name. In the first stage, the prices of 48 drugs were reduced and the prices of expensive drugs are expected to be reduced under the second stage.