History
The SPC was established in 1971 under the State Industrial Corporations Act Number 49 of 1957, as a result of the Report in March of that year of the Bibile - Wickramasinghe commission, appointed by the then Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike. Its founder chairman was Professor Seneka Bibile.
The SPC channelled all imports and production of pharmaceuticals, calling for worldwide bulk tenders which were limited to the approved drugs listed in the National Formulary. The public and private health sectors had to obtain all their requirements from the SPC. Hence the stranglehold of the Multinational corporations on the drug trade was successfully broken and they were made to compete with each other and with generic drug producers, enabling the country to obtain drugs much cheaper. Branded drugs were replaced by generic drugs in the prescription and sale of medicines.
In 1972 the SPC imported 52 drugs at a third of their previous prices. In 1973, the SPC itself bought the raw material necessary for 14 private processing laboratories established in the island. Some drug prices dropped by half or two-thirds. The SPC bought from an Indian company the raw material necessary for a widely used tranquilliser at a much lower price than that charged by a Swiss multinational.
The Prescriber, a quarterly publication edited by the National Formulary Committee, was published by the SPC and distributed to all medical personnel. The extravagant promotional practices of drugs manufacturers were stopped to remove the dangers and costs inherent in process.
With the election of the Multi-National-friendly United National Party Government of 1977, the SPC was called upon to compete with the private sector. There was continued government control of the types of drugs imported, but permission was given to the private sector to import multiple brands. The SPC was never dissolved and continued to supply affordable drugs, continuing to be responsible for centralised procurement for the government health sector.
Read more about this topic: State Pharmaceuticals Corporation Of Sri Lanka
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“If man is reduced to being nothing but a character in history, he has no other choice but to subside into the sound and fury of a completely irrational history or to endow history with the form of human reason.”
—Albert Camus (19131960)
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (18121870)
“The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism.... Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)