Minister of Health: No medicine price increases this year

CAIRO – 20 January 2018: There are no further increases on medicine prices foreseen for this year, announced Head of the Central Administration of Pharmaceutical Affairs at the Ministry of Health Rasha Zyada Friday.

Zyada’s remarks came following the Ministry of Health’s decision on Tuesday to increase medicine prices.

Zyada stressed in press remarks on Friday that the ministry works steadily to ensure the availability of medications for diabetes and other chronic diseases, adding that the ministry closely considers the interests of the pharmaceutical companies so that the prices’ stability would not inflict losses or reduce their production capacity.

The decision triggered a backlash from a number of parliamentarians. MP Mohamed Fouad submitted a request to the Speaker of the Parliament to summon the Minister of Health Ahmed Emad over the new increases; While MP Magdy Marshad condemned the Ministry’s “ill-advised attitude” in dealing with issues relating to medicine.

The Ministry of Health announced earlier on Tuesday that it had approved the request of some private pharmaceutical companies to raise the prices of some vital medicines, of which stocks have been running low, by 20-40 percent.

The decision boiled down to the growing gap between the cost of manufacturing some drugs and their selling prices with the profit margins of manufacturing companies in mind. This is the third time that the government has raised medicine prices; in May 2016, local medicine prices were increased by 20 percent while the prices of imported medicines increased by 40 percent.

The second wave of medicine price hikes that was approved by the government was in January 2017 when another 30-40 percent increase was imposed on local medicines and 40-50 percent on the imports.

The Ministry of Health and population announced early last year the formation of a subcommittee that is responsible for monitoring the medicines in the market, which is one of the top concerns of the Egyptian people after the Central Bank’s November 2016 move to freely float the pound and the subsequent lift of governmental subsidiaries from imported goods and medicines.

Following a severe shortage of penicillin in late 2017, the Health Ministry's Pharmaceutical Inspection Department announced that it would monitor the distribution of penicillin daily from Egyptian pharmaceutical trading companies to the markets.