All-India Drug Action Network (AIDAN) has called upon the Central government to take appropriate and effective steps to ensure availability of medicines at affordable prices to the common man after it brought out the study revealing huge price differences for the same medicines of different companies.

AIDAN, a non-government campaign group for rational drug therapy and policy, has demanded the government to create a single regulatory agency to look into drug pricing, approval and quality issues. Currently, different ministries are involved in drug pricing, for granting marketing approval and exports. The organisation is planning to campaign with political parties to include the suggestions in their election manifesto for the upcoming parliament election 2009.

"Any issues related to medicines should be addressed by a single regulatory agency. Currently, Commerce ministry, health ministry and chemicals ministry are involved in administering pharmaceutical industry. The government is viewing drug manufacturing only from a commercial angle and this is the basic problem in addressing the public health issues," said Dr Gopal Dabade, co-convener, AIDAN.

The price regulation of the list of essential medicines should be based on the categories rather than individual drugs and the control measures should include all vaccines and recombinant DNA technology based products in the list. In order to include new medicines in the essential medicines category, the National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM) should be revised in every two to three years, along with regular revision of the list of drugs under price control.

The policy analysis study of AIDAN, released in December 2008, reveals a dilution in the size of price controlled drugs where in the Drug Price Control Order 1979 addressed 347 medicines while the number has been reduced to 74 now. The number of categories under price control has been reduced from three in 1979 to one in the latest DPCO. The total domestic pharma sales covered under the price control has also reduced from 90 per cent in 1979 to 50 per cent in 1995, enlists the study.

The network suggested that the drug regulatory authority should limit the new drug approvals to those having distinct therapeutic value, safety or cost advantage. The drug procurement systems for public health institutes should be based on quality and the government should promote manufacturing of expensive antibiotics, drugs for TB and MDR-TB, HIV disease, and non-communicable diseases in the public sector pharma firms.

The government should also enforce stringent norms to check unethical and extravagant drug promotion through implementation of a code for manufacturers and incorporating guidelines in Medical Council's code of conduct. A regularly updated Indian National Formulary on the lines of British National Formulary should also be set up to provide unbiased prescribing information and rational guidelines for use of drugs, added Dr Dabade.

As Pharmabiz reported, the latest drug price data prepared by the network showed sharp price variations between the lowest priced brand and the highest priced brand for the same drug. The price difference varies from 220 per cent to 2000 per cent. The report has listed 16 therapeutic segments namely bacterial and viral infections, cardiac and related disease, diabetes, cancer, psychiatric disorders, metabolic disorders, arthritis and erectile dysfunction.