With no indications about finalisation of the long-pending national pharmaceutical policy, which has been pushed into oblivion by the industry and the government, the public interest groups have now launched fresh attempts to bring it back to the notice of the authorities.
A number of activist groups recently held national consultation which called for extended price control as the only option to ensure better and fairer treatment for the people and conveyed the anguish of the public about the inordinate delay in finalising the policy. The leaders of several organisations also met the officials of the health ministry to press for the finalisation of the policy.
The leaders said they would be meeting the officials of different ministries concerned and writing to all the ministers in the Group of Ministers (GoM) formed to examine the draft policy. Though the UPA government, coming into power again last year, included the policy as a priority agenda for the 100-day programme, nothing has happened during the last one year, they claimed.
The government had asked Agriculture minister Sharad Pawar to head the GoM again last year, but it is yet to hold a meeting on the policy. ``It has gone under IPL cricket and lot many other things and nobody cares about the important pharma policy now,’’ one of the senior activists lamented. Amitava Guha of Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, Dr Meera Shiva of Initiative for Health, Equity and Society, Dr Nirmal Gurbani and Leena Menghani of MSF were among those who attended the consultation and called for early finalisation of the policy.
Meanwhile, official sources said the GoM was yet to decide on the date of meeting. Health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, law minister Veerappa Moily, commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma, chemicals and fertilisers minister M K Alagiri, deputy chairman planning commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia and science and technology minister Prithviraj Chavan are the other members of the GoM.
The national pharmaceutical policy has been pending since 2002, after draft Pharmaceutical Policy 2002 was aborted. After many committees and reports, a final draft was submitted in November 2006 and GoM was set up by the Prime Minister in January 2007 with Pawar as the head. Even though the GoM held four meetings on April 10, 2007, September 12, 2007, January 30, 2008 and April 30, 2008, it failed to make any acceptable recommendations.