Even as the entire country is reeling under paucity of the life-saving drug human albumin serum, the All India Chemists & Distributors’ Federation (AICDF) has sought the intervention of the Prime Minister and the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to address the grave situation being faced by the health sector for the last eight months.
The paucity of human albumin drug started in July 2014 and all the government hospital pharmacies and the in-house pharmacies of private hospitals in the country have been facing acute shortage of it since then. The medicine is also not available even in some community pharmacies.
The reason for the shortage of this medicine is attributed to the the manufacturing companies which are alleged to have deliberately stopped production of this drug as the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) had brought the human albumin serum under price control.
In a letter to the Prime Minister, AICDF general secretary Joydeep Sarkar demanded to the government to ensure uninterrupted supply of the life saving drug to save the patients across the country. It also says that, taking advantage of the situation, several manufacturers are persuading their customers to sell the drug higher than the prescribed rate fixed by DPCO.
The association has informed the NHRC that despite the country is facing severe shortage of the medicine, all the state governments and the government at the central are showing a lethargic attitude in solving the problems.
While speaking to Pharmabiz, Joydeep Sarkar says, “the drug is not available for the past three months in pharmacy stores of government and private hospitals. Also it is not available with most of the wholesalers, distributors or retailers. Patients are suffering a lot and struggling hard to procure the drug. We are not only traders, but also health workers. So it is our duty to make sure the availability of all life saving drugs in the market”.
He said the Fair Price Pharmacies at the government hospitals and medical colleges in West Bengal are also running short of this drug for more than one year, and the government is doing nothing to solve the crisis. The scarcity of the essential medicine has also affected the liver and kidney operations in several hospitals, not only in West Bengal, but in other states as well.
A report from Kerala says that the shortage of human albumin in the state-owned Karunya Pharmacies has turned the life of patients miserable. A leading wholesaler in Kerala, Antony Tharian has said the short supply of medicine has started in the state for a long time and the manufacturing companies are not taking the demand request seriously despite incessant pressures.
In Tamil Nadu, the situation is much graver, says Kovai Kasiraman, Coimbatore district president of the TNCDA. The drug is not available anywhere in the state at present.