Pakistan, May 15 -- Pakistan's retail pharmaceutical market has crossed Rs1.049 trillion in sales by March 2025. This marks a 20.6% increase in rupee terms and over 23% in dollar terms. However, this growth came mainly from rising medicine prices. According to global data firm IQVIA, the actual number of medicines sold only increased by 3.6% over the year. This raises serious concerns about affordability and access to healthcare for ordinary Pakistanis.

Most of the revenue growth came from price hikes. In fact, 69% of the increase was due to companies charging more for the same medicines. Only 18% came from higher sales volumes, while new medicines contributed just 10%. Experts say this shows that people are not using much more medicine....