ISLAMABAD: After years of closure, the management of Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) has decided to reopen the second pharmacy of the hospital and directed the prime minister`s health card programme team to vacate the premises.

On the otherhand, doctors of the hospital have complained that patients get substandard but costly medicines from the hospital`s pharmacy.However, Pims` spokesperson Dr Aneeza Jalil said doctors should prescribe medicines with generic names instead of the brand names.

In February 2018, the Pims management had sealed a pharmacy which paid only Rs12,000 per month rent for over a decade on the basis of a stay order. The then Pims administer, Dr Raja Amjad Mehmood, had said the pharmacy at the main hospital was paying Rs2.2 million per month rent and the one at the children`s hospital Rs1.8 million. So there was no need to continue with the third one that was paying Rs12,000 per month.

Later, the management continued with the two pharmacies run by a same group and revised the contract.

According to an agreement, the pharmacies had to pay Rs4.4 million per month, around Rs1.8 mil-lion for one pharmacy and Rs2.6 million for the other. Though the management of pharmacies paid the rent for four months regularly, it later started delaying the payment. So the management sealed one of the pharmacies which had to pay Rs1.8 million per month. Later, the premises of the pharmacy was handed over to the health card programme team.

Documents showed that the pending amount of the pharmacies reached Rs66.6 million. The Medical Teaching Institution (MTI) management in January 2023 had made a settlement with the pharmacy administration and it was decided that the pharmacy will pay an additional amount of Rs1.2 million per month [installment of Rs40,000 per day].

Later, MTI was abolished and on March 2, 2023, the then executivedirector Dr Naeem Malik approved the extension in the settlement. The new administration has finally directed the health card team to vacate the premises so that the second pharmacy would be opened.

The decision to open the second pharmacy will decrease the difficulties of patients as they walk over a kilometre within the hospital to buy medicines.

A senior doctor, requesting anonymity, said the second pharmacy could not be closed without getting the go-ahead from the management.

Both pharmacies were being run by one group and it had decided to close one of them because patients preferred to buy medicines within the hospital rather than going out of the hospital.

As both pharmacies were being run by same group, it was in favour of the group to close one of them andsave the amount of rent. It was the job of the management to keep both of pharmacies open or it should have handed over the second pharmacy to some other party. But over the years, the managements did not take a decision in favour of patients, he said.

`After putting a lot of pressure, now it is being said the second pharmacy will be open but we have a complaint that the pharmacy gives medicines which are substandard but with a high profit margin,` he said.

`We prescribe medicines of multinational companies which are effective and also cheaper but attendants of patients bring alternatives which are substandard and costly, claiming that the medical store team told them that medicine was not available,` he said.

`There are a number of com-plaints lodged by people and even doctors about the practice but unfortunately the management is not willing to listen to it,` he said.

The spokesperson for Pims, Dr Aneeza Jalil, while talking to Dawn said the health card team will be shifted somewhere else to reopen the pharmacy.

`As far as alternate of the medicine is concerned, I believe that doctors should not prescribe medicine with brand names. They should prescribe them with generic names so that the medical store team would give similar medicine,` she said.

When asked about complaints, she said people mostly complain verbally due to which action cannot be taken.

She suggested to the citizens to file written complaints so that action would be taken against the pharmacy.