As the country’s drug markets are flooded with counterfeit and substandard medicines sold and threatening the health of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people in those nations and consumers in more advanced nations as well.

According to reports, a surge in Fake and poor quality medicines means that 250,000 children a year are thought to die after receiving shoddy or outright fake drugs intended to treat malaria and pneumonia alone.

The called for an urgent international effort to combat a “pandemic of bad drugs” that is thought to kill hundreds of thousands of people globally every year.

More are thought to die from poor or fake vaccines and antibiotics used to treat or prevent acute infections and diseases such as hepatitis, yellow fever and meningitis.

Most of the deaths are in countries where a high demand for drugs combines with poor examination, quality control and regulations to make it easy for criminal gangs and cartels to permeate the market.

For the past 70 years, the quality medicine sector remained ignored by the vested interests and officials in league with the thugs, cheats and drug Mafia in minting billion in this despicable business. The officials cannot present a single instance that a drug deal was arrested and punished in any court of law for the past several decades for selling spurious and unregistered medicine.

Substandard medicines a pill for instance, that has 80 to 90 percent of the active ingredient may actually accelerate the development of resistant germs. The dose is not enough to eliminate all the targeted germs and those that remain are the most resistant to the drug. The resistant strains can then infect new people.

Quetta is known as city of medical stores where sub-standard and low quality medicine or counterfeited medicines are openly sold. Interestingly, most of the confirmed cases of fake products, sub-standard and low quality medicine, cases were registered. But they were never sent to the concerned drug court for trial.

The Provincial government also assigns such a task to its officials to perform the similar service to the community and the people as a whole. There are no two opinions on this issue as thousands of medical stores and druggists are involved in patronizing the unregistered labs and factories by selling their illicit products in their outlets with the charm to earn thousand times more profit. The Chemists and druggists should not be allowed to buy products from vendors, mostly unknown or with dubious characters selling medicines to them. License of such shops should be cancelled immediately and the owner is arrested and punished under the law for selling spurious medicine.

The Chief Minister Balochistan and the Minister for Health should take personal interest in this campaign ensuring supply of quality drug to the people. It is more significant for the people that the Government hospitals should provide quality medicine to the patients visiting those Government facilities in the major hospitals in Quetta or elsewhere in the remote corners of Balochistan.

The Government of Balochistan should ensure that it will not purchase sub-standard/spurious and low quality medicine from unfamiliar companies and labs. It will ensure supply of quality drugs in all the Government hospitals all over Balochistan defending the life of the innocent patients.