Algeria: 368 pharmaceuticals barred from import to streamline expenses

The General Manager of pharmaceutical and medical equipment at the Ministry of Health, Population and Hospital Reform, Mr Hamou Hafed, stated that a recorded slump in the imported medicines’ bill has reached more than 20 percent, in an assessment of the first six months of 2015, compared to the same period of the previous year 2014.

He said in this connection that the Health Ministry conducted between 2014 and 2015, a study about the price of medicines, and pinpointed a slash in the cost of more than 800 pharmaceutical products during that period, stressing that this price downward trend is expected to continue on the national medicines’ market.

Mr Hamou Hafed also announced that the government is now considering the creation of a national agency for pharmaceuticals, in close coordination with the relevant dealers and their managements in an effort to rejuvenate the workings of the national pharmaceutical market.

He further noted that not less than 368 pharmaceutical products had been barred from import in a bid to streamline and curtail unnecessary expenses and also to prop up the national production.