Import of drugs will go on fast track, says NHRA CEO

The import of drugs to Bahrain is going to be on the fast track immediately, says Chief Executive Officer of National Health Regulatory Authority (NHRA) Dr Mariam Al Jalahma.

She was speaking at the consultative meeting between the NHRA and the representatives of the medical industry, the pharmacists and medical clinics, here on the Bahrain Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) premises yesterday.

Talking to DT News, Dr Jalahma said the supply of drugs was going to get the top priority in Bahrain. 

“The drugs that are already registered abroad will be registered within one week,” she says, explaining, “and then we will give them a gap period for one year to finalise the registration. So, no more wait to one year to have your drugs entered.”

The life-saving drugs will also be allowed to enter Bahrain through the fast route irrespective of the fact that they have no registration anywhere – because life is more precious than all the procedures and registrations and must be saved at any cost.

She said that they were working with the Customs authorities to make things easier as well.

She said the Supreme Council for Health had asked her to formulate a committee with the sub speciality so that it could help NHRA in making its decisions when it could not do so due to some technical complications. 

“No committees for licensing - only for the regulations,” she explains.

These two issues will be published in the official news of the legal affairs. 

“It has been a very fruitful meeting. We discussed a lot of issues related to regulations in the hospitals, medical centres, regulating and registering drugs, licensing professionals,” she says.

“We have discussed the updates that NHRA has been working on to fasten the registration of drugs, making quick route to it and also we have been discussing that we are trying to minimise the requirement for licensing to make it easy to register professionals without delay.”

Dr Jalahma said that they had listened to very valuable comments from members of the committee and members from the private sector and they would be working with them together to issue the regulations related to standards of hospitals and health centres.

She said that they were working on the regulations of hospitals and criteria for licensing and once that was done they would start working on the grading of the hospitals. Grading is mandatory by law but the hospitals will have to pay for it.

Head of Health and Medical Committee at BCCI Adel Hassan Al Aali said that the role of the committee was just that of the facilitator between the medical industry and the NHRA.

“We bring the people from NHRA here and ask the people in the industry to express their concerns, their problems and issues before them,” he says, “And NHRA are to answer or to say ‘we will look into the issues and come back to you or we are in the process of resolving this issue’.”

This is the second conference between the medical industry and the NHRA and the BCCI is looking forward to have another one in February. 

All the points that have not been answered in this meeting will be addressed in the next meeting. The BCCI is not an authoritative body. It is a go between, a facilitator that facilitates between the discretionary authority and the medical industry.

It was a good, positive discussion, beneficial to all the stakeholders - the industry, the investors, doctors and patients. It was also a good opportunity for the NHRA to know what the concerns of the people were and how to resolve them.

“Patent is the grey area between the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Commerce and we need this to be resolved,” says Al Aali.