Background
At the time, pharmaceutical companies were making considerable money by selling drugs under their trade names, giving out biased information about the branded drugs as against those named generically. Doctors often prescribed branded drugs, which were far more expensive than generic drugs, which have the same efficacy.
The United Front Government of 1970 appointed the Wickremasinghe-Bibile commission of inquiry into this issue and it recommended the establishment a national policy and of a state body to regularise the trade.
In the 1970s Sri Lanka demonstrated that a state buying agency linked to a national formulary was a viable and powerful instrument for reducing drug costs without compromising quality, for saving foreign exchange, for rationalising drug usage and for supplying essential drugs at reasonable prices to the whole community. This was made possible by the formulation and implementation of an integrated national pharmaceutical policy.
A unique phenomenon about Sri Lanka's pharmaceuticals policy was that the entire programme was conceived, formulated, developed and implemented by Sri Lankan nationals without any form of external aid or assistance.
Read more about this topic: Sri Lanka National Pharmaceuticals Policy
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)