Pharmaceutical societies urge more engagements on new face mask ceiling price

Several pharmaceutical societies across the country have urged the government to have more engagements with stakeholders before announcing a new ceiling price for face masks.

“While we laud the government’s efforts in trying to make face masks more affordable to the masses, we sincerely hope that the government will consult more stakeholders, especially those representing pharmacists, namely the MPS, Sarawak Pharmaceutical Society and Sabah Pharmaceutical Society before making such decisions that have far-reaching consequences,” said a joint statement today by Malaysian Pharmaceutical Society (MPS) president Amrahi Buang, Sarawak Pharmaceutical Society president Susan Tang and Sabah Pharmaceutical Society president Jemima Ho.

They said that there are many grades of face masks currently sold in the market, with the medical-grade masks being used by healthcare frontliners having 95 percent and above filtration compared to non-medical grade face masks, which has around 65 to 80 percent filtration.

As such, the cost of manufacturing medical grade three-ply face masks is much higher, they said.

“We would like to urge the government to set ceilings for different grades of three-ply masks instead of a blanket price for medical masks only.

“The government should also consider reinforcing the requirements of newly manufactured face masks being registered with the Medical Device Authority (MDA) now that face mask manufacturing has resumed normally to prevent subpar imports,” they said.

The government had announced recently that the new ceiling price for three-ply face masks would be further reduced to RM1 from RM1.50 without any grace period.

The three pharmaceutical societies also urged the government to consider the extra logistical costs of bringing medical-grade face masks to Sabah and Sarawak.

“With sea freights and air cargo volume still expensive, the cost is always higher in East Malaysia,” they said.

The sudden announcement of price decrease also means that community pharmacies are forced to sell at a loss as these pharmacies usually keep a high volume of stocks of good medical-grade masks for the public, which were purchased at a higher cost, they added.

“Further, by reducing the ceiling price drastically to RM1 or lower, it may inadvertently encourage the production of substandard face masks, thus defeating the purpose of providing vital protection to the rakyat,” they said.

Instead, they suggested that the government can consider subsidising face masks for the B40 group instead of imposing a blanket ceiling price for all face masks.

They said their community pharmacies are ready to assist in the distribution of face masks to ensure the free or subsidised face masks reach those that truly need them.

“We would also like to once again remind the public to purchase face masks from reputable sources.

“Try to avoid buying face masks from online platforms or any shops as their quality is not guaranteed,” they said.

Previously, they had also deemed the new RM1.50 ceiling price for three-ply surgical face masks as “unjust” to community pharmacists.

At that time, they had also said that the RM1.50 ceiling price was decided allegedly without “reasonable notice or key stakeholder consultation”. - Mkini