INA - BAGHDAD

PM's Advisor for Health Affairs, Hamoudi Al-Lami, revealed on Saturday the registration of important medicines for the first time in Iraq with the continuation of government support within the drug localization project, which is expected to be available within 6 months.

"Most of the production of local pharmaceutical factories currently goes to the Ministry of Health under annual contracts, while the remainder is prepared for warehouses and pharmacies at a lower rate," said Al-Lami in a statement to the Iraqi News Agency - INA.

He added, "New important medicines have been registered for the first time by local pharmaceutical factories, their production requirements and supplies will be provided during the next 6 months, including 28 medicines to treat high blood pressure, 28 new medicines for diabetics, and 14 types of antibiotics, in addition to many other medicines. We hope that they will be provided to citizens during next year."

"The current factories have started adding new production lines, which will double production and provide more medicines to pharmacies and stores. There are pharmaceutical factories under construction in different stages and are expected to be completed and start production by the end of 2025," he included.

Regarding the government measures to support the national product, Al-Lami said that "there are several measures within the pharmaceutical localization project launched by the Prime Minister, the most important of which is reducing customs duties on machines and raw materials from 7% to 0.05%, as well as forming a committee headed by the Minister of Health to reduce smuggled and counterfeit medicines, in addition to taking strict measures to prevent the circulation of medicines that have not been properly imported, i.e. not obtaining the approval of the Ministry of Health and not obtaining an import license."

"Among the measures is facilitating the process of registering medicines by forming more than one committee to study the files so that registering a medicine file has become 3 months while it used to take more than a year to register, facilitating the process of re-registering files for medicines produced and used for more than 5 years, facilitating technology transfer processes for complex medicines such as blood diseases medicines, cancer treatment medicines and medicines for chronic diseases," he explained.

Al-Lami added, "The measures include forming a committee headed by the Prime Minister's Advisor for Pharmaceutical Industries Affairs; to consider the problems facing modern national factories and take the necessary measures to solve the problems and obstacles, in addition to forming the Pharmaceutical Council headed by the Technical Undersecretary of the Ministry of Health; to consider matters related to the Ministry of Health and take the necessary measures to address them."

He pointed out that "the Prime Minister personally follows up on the file of localizing the pharmaceutical industry through the meetings he holds with specialists in the presence of representatives of the private sector and the periodic reports submitted to him."