"If the government publishes a list of essential drugs, then it would be obliged to provide those drugs to the health facilities. The price of those drugs then would have to be made affordable for the patients and manufacturers would be bound to strictly control quality of those drugs," Prof of Pharmacy and former vice chancellor of Dhaka University AK Azad Chowdhury said.

There should be a list of essential drugs according to the people's disease pattern in a country as it helps to make a plan of drug manufacturing against the demand in the country, which leads to the control of the price of drugs, said Prof ABM Farook, Department of Pharmacy of Dhaka University.

If there were a list of essential drugs, the manufacturing companies would not be able to fix the prices according to their sweet will and people would be able to buy drugs at reasonable prices as the government would have full control over those drugs, he added.

There must be a list of essential drugs comprising around 300 to 400 drugs, Dr Zafrullah Chowdhury, Projects Coordinator of Gonoshwasthya Kendra, said

"We do not need flooding of the market with some 14,000 drugs of which around 8,000 are deceptive," he said, adding that a huge amount of money is fraudulently taken from the people who have very little knowledge of the economy of drug production.

According to the experts, the manufacturing companies influence the government authorities concerned not to prepare and update an essential drug list regularly. Because, once the essential drug list is published and gazetted, the doctors would have the idea that these are the first line drugs. They would prescribe those

reducing the use of secondary drugs, which might hamper the business of the drug manufacturing companies.

Focusing on the need for an updated essential drug list the experts also said the foreign companies could not capture the market of those drugs included in essential drug list, as according to the TRIPS (trade related aspects of intellectual property rights) public health related drugs would be out of its jurisdiction that is going to be implemented by 2016.

Even the World Health Organisation (WHO) has been pressing different countries to prepare a list of essential drugs to protect public health through its guideline of around 350 essential drugs.

Talking to The Daily Star, Director of Drug Administration Habibur Rahman, however, said absence of an updated list of essential drugs does not cause any problem at all.

"A drug list comprising around 185 drugs was prepared to ensure availability and production of some essential drugs but it was not updated after 1988. But different companies are now producing drugs in the country and their combined production has already ensured availability of the essential drugs," said Habibur.

Experts, on the other hand, said a list of essential drugs is supposed to be updated at least once in every two years as the status of different drugs change after more effective new drugs enter the market.

"The Drug Control Committee termed 117 drugs as commonly used essential drugs and controls the price of those drugs among 14,000 brand named drugs prevailing in the market," said Associate Professor of the Department of Pharmacology of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU).

"Although the Drug Administration took lots of money from the World Health Organisation to prepare a list of essential drugs, it did not work at all for preparing the list," said Prof Farook.

Brushing aside the allegation, the director of Drug Administration said steps have been taken to prepare an updated list of essential drugs according to the guideline of WHO last year and almost 250 drugs would be included in the list considering their usefulness, safety and efficacy.

"The list will be completed by the end of this year and 60 to 70 per cent of work have been completed already," he added.