Government to set prices of all life-saving drugs: High Court

The government must fix the prices of all life-saving medicines made in Bangladesh. The High Court bench of Justice Md. Rezaul Hasan and Justice Biswajit Debnath gave this verdict on Monday (August 25). Earlier, the government used to fix the prices of 739 types of life-saving medicines. But in 1993, the government issued a notification. In which the government was given the power to fix the prices of 177 types of medicines. The High Court declared that notification illegal and invalid and ruled. In 2018, a human rights organization named Human Rights and Peace for Bangladesh filed a writ in the High Court challenging that notification. Senior Advocate Manzil Morshed, the lawyer for the writ petitioner, said that due to the power of the private drug manufacturers’ owners’ association to fix the prices of life-saving medicines, the common people have to buy them at higher prices. On August 17, the interim government formed a task force to prepare a new list of life-saving medicines. The High Court ruled that the government should determine the prices of all medicines on the list.