In what can prove to be dampener to the efforts of the Government to bridle the prices of essential drugs through the new pharmaceutical pricing policy, more and more drugs currently under price control are going out of stocks with the retail chemist shops.
Even before the implementation of the policy that will expand the ambit of price control, many out of the 74 drugs now under price control are not available in the markets, according to a cross-check in many shops in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh.
Betamenthasone, metronidazole, salbutamol, cefotaxime, dexamethasone, pentazocine, furazolidone, framycentin, and pentoxyfylline are among those drugs not available with the chemist shops as many companies have withdrawn from the manufacturing of these drugs on the grounds of non-profitability.
According to those in supply chain, out of the 74 molecules, not even ten drugs are available in the markets now, forcing the customers to opt for expensive alternate medicines. If ten tablets of salbutamol were available for Rs. 1.80 earlier, now the customers have to pay at least Rs. 6 to buy its alternative drugs.
“Some companies had long back stopped manufacturing many of these scheduled drugs following the price control. Now more medicines are added to this list of non-available drugs. We have demands for these drugs, but we don’t get supply from the companies,” a Delhi-based whole-sale dealer of drugs pointed out.
Apart from the profitability factor that prevents companies from producing them, the doctors are also reportedly not pushing these drugs in the absence of sufficient commissions. This has led to decline in supply, discouraging the retailers to stock them.
If it is an indicator, many more essential drugs will be out of the market and their production will stop to circumvent the expanded price control as part of the new pharma policy, according to public health activists. There are no sufficient safeguards in the policy to check this trend as the government cannot force the companies to manufacture a particular formulation, they point out.