Sri Lankans love paracetamol

Nadira GUNATILLEKE

Sri Lankans use 1.5 million paracetamol tablets a day. All paracetamol tablets available in the market are of high quality, low cost and manufactured by the Sri Lanka Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Corporation (SPMC), a Health Ministry spokesman said.

According to the spokesman Sri Lanka needs around 47 million paracetamol tablets monthly.

The country needs around 564 million tablets annually. The SPMC will produce 30 million tablets for March while 1.6 million tablets have already been released to the market. The SPMC has increased its annual production capacity to 1,800 million tablets. It was only 1,600 million tablets per year earlier, the spokesman said.

A paracetamol shortage occurred in the country recently due to quality failure of imported paracetamol tablets. The Medical Supplies Division and the National Drug Quality Assurance Laboratory rejected imported paracetamol tablet shipments due to quality failure, he said.

"The Health Ministry calls around 25,000 tenders annually to purchase drugs. The supplier did not supply drugs on time. When such drugs face quality failures, it takes a long time to purchase the drug for the second time.

"No action can be taken against drug supplying companies as they have the monopoly in the market. As a remedy the production capacity of the SPMC increased and at the moment it produces 42 varieties of drugs," he added.