A Chennai-based advocate dealing with pharmaceutical cases for the last 40 years wants the new Union health minister to consider a thorough review of the Drug Price Control Order 2013 as it contains a host of inconsistencies and does not help to provide essential medicines to the common man at affordable prices.
N S Nanda Kumar, the advocate, says that the national healthcare system envisages complete healthcare management of the people by the government and supply of affordable medicines to the common man. But, the latest DPCO is not suiting to the health-aspirations of the people of the country. It is a document for a selected group of manufacturers, especially for big market players, he alleged.
“From the beginning, all the DPCOs contained anomalies. The 1979 Order was a skeleton document which contained 370 molecules. It was made on the recommendations of the Hathi committee report. At that time there were about 400 molecules in the market. Derivatives were not separately added as independent items in the list”, he said.
In 1987 DPCO, the number of molecules in the list was reduced to 70 based on Kelkar committee report. Again in 1995, the same number was retained in that year’s Order. Whereas, during this period the number of molecules introduced in the market was around 800. In 2013, the latest of the Orders, a change was made to the name of the category and put 150 molecules in the list and made the banner, National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM). The number of molecules in the market at present is more than 800. However, the number of medicines included in the latest DPCO is increasing with occasional addition of molecules, he told Pharmabiz in an interview.
Several medicines with limited use or for restricted occasions and multiple uses have found places in several pages under various categories. Medicines used for the purpose of anaesthesia have been included in the essential medicines list (NLEM). Medicines for anaesthesia are only for the doctors’ treatment purpose, but Ether and Nitrous Oxide have found places in the 2013 DPCO. These medicines have to be deleted from the list. Several medicines which have multiple uses are repeated in the list. There should be a separate category for medicines for multiple uses and such drugs should be brought under that section and it should be considered as one. Several essential drugs could not find places in the list, said Adv. Nanda Kumar.
There are plenty of psycho-therapeutic medicines in the market. But only two of them (Chlorpromazine, Haloperidol) have been included in the list. More such drugs, including ant-diabetes, need to be brought in the list. Likewise, certain drugs in the list are not commonly used and many are out-dated.
He said the Indian made derivatives should have a separate Schedule. The definition of ‘new drug’ requires suitable modification to encourage local manufacturers for getting licence for manufacturing such medicines for low prices.
According to Nanda Kumar, after globalisation in 1991, multinational pharmaceutical companies got entry into India in large numbers and many patented drugs of MNCs got into the Indian market.