Lahore high court dismisses plea against Pakistan's import of Indian vaccines

Lahore high court has dismissed two petitions filed by a private pharmaceutical company challenging the federal government's policy allowing import of certain vaccines from India.

Justice Asad Munir of the Lahore high court's Rawalpindi branch, who had reserved his judgement last month on petitions filed by Amson Vaccines and Pharma against the government's amended policy, dismissed the pleas yesterday.

The federal government's counsel said during the hearing of the matter that allowing the import of vaccines from India did not violate any Pakistani law.

The counsel noted that Amson Vaccines, while filing tenders, had itself sought to supply Indian vaccines.

The counsel further argued that the firm had approached the high court as it wanted to have its "hegemony" in the import and supply of vaccines.

In its first petition filed in October last year, the company said the government had ordered the purchase of 16.77 million doses of tetanus toxoid and 11.56 million doses of BCG vaccines from India on September 15, but no medicine could be imported from the neighbouring country under the national trade policy of 2009-'10.

In the second petition, the company said the government had not taken stakeholders on board while making changes to the trade policy to facilitate the import of vaccines from India.