Sohail Khan
High drug price in the market act as a great barrier to seek effective healthcare as people lack purchasing power. The drug price grow faster than the national or per capita income in our country and cuts into the household budget heavily. The poor and the middle class are the worst hit. There are instances when people go without drugs (by extension without treatment) or buy a small proportion of the required doses of drugs due to high price which is heart breaking. But ironically in the market, for a disease, both cheap and costly medicines are available. Medicines for cancer, costs both 8 thousand or one lack eight thousand, for calcium, it costs Rs 7/- or Rs 70/- and we don’t know why? Why are Generic medicine cheap and branded medicines costly?
Generic & Branded Medicines Debate: Generic medicines are unbranded medicines which are equally safe and having the same efficacy as that of the branded medicines in terms of their branded therapeutic value. The price of generic medicines are much cheaper than their branded equivalent. It works in the same way and provides the same clinical benefits as its branded-name version. In branded medicines, the composition is same as of generic drugs but there is patent cost, incentives for MR’s, for the doctors to prescribe it, which all together make it costlier. For example if manufacturing cost of a drug is Rs 1/- ,it can be available in the market from Rs 100/- to Rs 1000/- . Doctors, medical cooperation, drug companies have a nexus in which we are caught. Generally it is being argued that if a medicine is not having a brand and is cheap, it is of low quality. This argument is absurd and does not have a scientific logic.
“The Jan Aushudhi medicines have played a big role in bringing down the act of pocket expenditure of patients suffering from life threatening diseases in India”
Jan Aushadhi Scheme : India is the largest supplier of generic drugs in the world and Indian pharmaceutical companies have been trying to push down the cost of medication in many countries across the world. Yet the marginalised population of India have less access to medicines owing to low costs, hence there is an urgent need for making the cheaper generics available to Indians in the best interest of population. To ensure every Indian has access to quality healthcare at affordable prices, an initiative with the name of Jan Aushudhi Scheme was being implemented through Bureau of Pharma PSUs of India (BPPI) which is a society setup by the five Pharma PSU and works under the development of Pharmaceutical, Ministry of chemicals and fertilisers and GOI. The Jan Aushudhi medicines have played a big role in bringing down the act of pocket expenditure of patients suffering from life threatening diseases in India. The PMBJP scheme has lead to total saving of approximately Rs 1000/- crore for common citizens as these medicines are cheaper by 50% to 90% of average market price.
With developments like opening of over 5050 Janaushadhi stores across 652 districts, awareness and availability of high quality affordable generic medicines has increased in the country. About 10-15 lakh people benefit from Janaushadhi medicines per day and the market share of generic medicines has grown over three fold from 2% to 7%in last 3 years.
Conclusion : Though bound by law, neither doctors nor pharmacies want to dispense generic medicines to patients as the profit margin is low.Laws in India specify that all medical prescriptions should give generic medicines and all pharmacies must make them available to patients.But aggressive marketing by private pharma companies, cut-throat competition and ignorance of the customers coupled with weak enforcement of rules allow private manufactures of branded medicines to make a killing through our “friendly pharmacy”.
(The author is an RTI activist & a member of J&K Youth Parliament)
