The Health Ministry this week plans to cancel the licenses for 700 different kinds of medicine that were issued last year but were never produced by pharmaceutical companies.
“This brings the total number of canceled medicine licenses up to 2000 in only three months,” said Ashraf Bayoumi, head of Egypt’s state-run Central Administration for Pharmaceutical Affairs.
“The move will not affect the market," he stressed, "since each of these drugs has at least ten alternative varieties available in local pharmacies.”
Bayoumi went on to point out that the Health Ministry was now in the process of "reorganizing" the local drug market, in which more than 8000 different kinds of medicine are currently available.
Translated from the Arabic Edition.
