Minister of Pharmaceutical Industry, Abderrahmane Djamel Lotfi Benbahmed , called today, Tuesday, on pharmaceutical operators to increase their production capacities for materials and medical supplies used to care for patients infected with Coronavirus, according to a statement by the ministry.
The call came during a meeting chaired by the Minister and held at the Ministry’s headquarters with a number of pharmaceutical operators and producers, as well as representatives of the Pharmaceutical Distributors Association.
In this context, Benbahamed called to increase production capacity with regard to medicines and medical supplies used to combat the virus, by pooling efforts and coordinating between producers and distributors in order to achieve optimal management to provide the necessary treatments, underlining that they must be provided throughout the country.
Meanwhile, the minister stressed the need to ensure a safety stock of raw materials in order to cover production requirements and also to ensure a strategic safety stock of medicines, in addition to the mandatory weekly declaration by producers and distributors of the stock status and the distributed quantities of pharmaceutical materials and medical supplies used to take care of patients infected with the Coronavirus.
In its statement, the ministry said that “any form of monopoly or illegal commercial practices are strictly prohibited and may expose perpetrators to the most severe penalties adding that its services ensure the monitoring and inspection processes.”
The ministry is committed to providing full support and all facilities to work uninterruptedly 24/24 hours, adds the same source, which revealed in this context that the ministry has provided import licenses to more than one hundred pharmaceutical importers, institutions and even associations in order to bring in 15,000 oxygen concentrators and more of fifty generators.
