Mid last month All Indian Origin Chemists and Distributors Ltd, a company floated by All India Organisation of Chemists and Druggists announced a plan to support the initiative already took by the Department of Pharmaceuticals in the generics segment. It declared that a basket of more than 100 generic brands belonging to some key therapeutic segments will be manufactured and marketed throughout the country by the end of July in a bid to make these products cheaper to the public. It claims to have already launched 54 products in Mumbai in the first phase and planned to come out with another 50 by the end of July. These products belong to therapeutic segments of antibiotics, gastroenteritis, analgesics and multivitamins. The Organisation may be adding more generic products in future. Whether this project will succeed or not, only time can tell. But, the move if it is genuine, it will certainly give a boost to the Department's initiative of making drugs cheaper to a large majority of the public. The Department had launched the Jan Aushadhi project in August 2008 to make available quality generic drugs through government supported medical stores. By establishing the generic stores under the project, to start with in the premises of the district hospitals, the Department wanted to ensure quality medicines at affordable prices. By selling drugs with their chemical names, prices are bound to be far cheaper than the highly expensive branded products aggressively promoted by most pharma companies. The Department has identified 300 widely used drugs belonging to 16 therapeutic categories to be sold through the generic stores. The initial target of the programme was to open at least 100 generic stores in one year in various parts of the country.

The need for bringing some control on prices of widely used medicines is being increasingly felt in the country as the NPPA is unable to enforce its notified prices. Either the companies circumvent the price fixing orders of NPPA or they move court and obtain stay against the orders. The Union ministry of chemicals and Fertilizers is almost non functioning after the new minister took over. Because of this unfortunate state of affairs, the move to revise the 15 year old drug policy has been halted. During these 15 years, about 500 new drugs have been introduced in the Indian market which are all outside the Drug Price Control Order of 1995. Several of these new drugs are patented and are very high priced. And usually doctors prescribe these expensive branded drugs as they are induced and pampered by the pharma companies. The cost of treatment of diseases has vastly increased during the last ten years with a dramatic change in disease profile of the country. Life style diseases have displaced the infectious diseases in India as main killer diseases requiring life long intake of drugs for treating diabetes, cardiovascular disorders, cancer, AIDS, etc. The need to sell medicines at reasonable prices by cutting excessive profits comes in the context of this new reality. As big pharma companies are adamant to fall in line, the gestures like that of AIOCD and the government agencies should be appreciated.