With the goal of making the price control-mechanism more effective, the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) held a series of consultations with the stake-holders including those from other countries, and thus formally launched efforts to formulate international best practices for drug price control.

The authorities took views from the state drug controllers, health secretaries, NGOs, and drug control officials from other countries by organizing a round-table conference on last Friday and seminar next day. The issues of price control, use of generics, high duties, and strengthening of public sector pharmaceutical units came up for elaborate discussions at the roundtable, according to joint secretary in Chemicals Department, G S Sandhu.

He disclosed that the suggestions would be incorporated to improve the overall system and making it more transparent. The government is working towards this goal and many measures were underway in this regard, he said.

The seminar on `pharmaceutical pricing and regulatory framework for affordable medicines' was held jointly by the Department of Chemicals, NPPA and Department for International Development (DFID) of the British Government. Chemicals Minister Ram Vilas Paswan and his deputy in the cabinet B K Handique addressed the seminar, attended by NGOs, officials, select State secretaries and industry representatives.

``The main objective of the seminar was to share the Indian experience on drug price control and to learn from the global experience and initiate a process of formulating international best practices for drug price control,'' NPPA chairman Ashok Kumar said.

As part of the process, NPPA has already studied the existing mechanism in eight countries including UK, France, Israel, Canada, South Africa and prepared country profiles. It also wanted to make the stakeholders aware of the system in the country through a series of efforts like seminars.

Addressing the seminar, Paswan urged the WHO to help India to take its generic medicines to the developing countries. He also pleaded with the industry not to be driven ruthlessly by profit motives but to go by the interest of the nation and the poor. He also lauded the industry for keeping the prices of drugs in check even though inflation was so sky high in all other sectors.