Association of Medical Specialists fully supports the Health Minister

The Association of Medical Specialists (AMS) says that as the organisation that represents the majority of Medical Specialists in the state sector, it believes it has a duty to stress to the people that the news item on the front page of the Sunday Times last week and carried by some Sinhala newspapers during the week that “Sri Lanka would be left with substandard and untested drugs which would cause prolonged illness and death in many patients as a result of recent price regulations” is largely untrue and misleading.

The AMS agrees and endorses the facts mentioned in the detailed reply issued by the National Medicinal Regulatory Authority (NMRA) on October 19 in response this story.

It was sad to note that this article tried to implicate ‘some doctors’ among the unnamed sources it refers to, and the AMS would like to totally dissociate with the claims made in the name of ‘doctors’ in this article titled ‘Many essential drugs being withdrawn from Sri Lanka”.

The AMS wishes to commend and fully support the Hon. Health Minister’s initiative and mission of price regulating essential drugs and devices to increase patient access to quality-assured medicines. We also agree that cost is a major determinant of access to medicine, and we too totally agree that the price reductions of essential drugs done during the past two years has brought significant relief to many patients and there is a clear increase in the use of high quality drugs or better brands now than before as those drugs have become more affordable as clearly shown in NMRA’s detailed reply.

Some brands with high price time to time leaving the market due to poor sales they had amidst the competition they faced when alternatives were available, at a more affordable price, occurred even before price regulations started, and we would like to stress that there is no reason for panic even if the brands mentioned in the article leave our country as quality alternatives of them are already available, as shown in NMRA’s reply.