Federation of Medical Representatives Associations of India (FMRAI), Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (JSA), and the all India Drugs Action Network (AIDAN) have unanimously urged the Centre to pay due attention to the critical issue of universal access to essential medicines and evolve a mechanism to monitor the manufacturing of the same when the proposed pharma policy is finalized.

The proposed policy should also address the issues like prices of uncontrolled drugs to make them affordable for poor and the helpless. The demand was shaped out at the national convention on "Pharmaceutical Policy and People" organized by these organizations, here in New Delhi.

Talking over the issue, Dr Mira Shiva of AIDAN said that there were number of international pharma companies running their high priced medical products into the market and the people below the poverty line could not afford them. But no Government body was there to look into the matter, she said.

Over the past two decades, the pharma industry has been allowed freedom to hike prices of medicines whenever it wanted. The industry was also known to circumvent the existing regulations on price control, the participants at the convention said.

Amit Sen Gupta, secretary, National Campaign Committee on Drug Policy pointed out that though India ranked the 4th worldwide in making drugs, around 33 per cent of the population was still not getting medicines because of their lower economic status.
He suggested that the production of drugs for the poor could be ensured only by turning the public sector companies into major manufacturers in these areas. The government should constitute a single holding company for all PSU drug-makers. The company should provide support in the form of adequate resources, access to technology, sector-wise reservation, and preferential treatment in the cases of government purchase, he said.

Talking over the importance to monitor production of all essential medicines, Anant Phadke (JSA) said the government was not monitoring the production of even the few essential medicines listed as of now. He demanded a regular monitoring and revision of the list every two years.

The convention felt that the national pharma policy should have been ideally prepared by the Chemicals and Health Ministries together after sufficient deliberations with all the stake-holders. The national drugs and therapeutic authority also should be jointly run by the two ministries, they suggested.