Over 50 NGOs and cooperatives have expressed interest to join the campaign by the pharmaceutical department to make drugs affordable to the poorer sections of the society by opening up unbranded generic drug stores, named Jan Aushadhi.

After the government invited expression of intent from the interested parties in December, the department has received over 50 applications from NGOs, charitable bodies, cooperatives and other agencies to run the stores in different parts of the country. "We are scrutinising the applications and will take a final decision on according permission to them very soon," department sources said.

The department has prepared a detailed business model for the stores to be set up. It has also got prepared a software, by National Informatics Centre, for the fully computerised outlets which will have two pharmacists. According to the department official, if a store could make a sale of Rs 1.5 lakh a month, it can break even. The first outlet opened in Amritsar had good sales, clocking around Rs 27,000 in the first week itself, sources said.

Meanwhile, some of the unbranded generic medicines being sold through the Jan Aushadhi generic stores have become cheaper upto 90 per cent compared to the market prices, still ensuring profit to the manufacturers, according to the department.

The department document on the Jan Aushadi campaign has presented comparative prices of a handful drugs which have become so cheap. Pack of ten ciprofloxacin tablets (250mg) is sold at Rs 10.40 in the outlet against Rs 55 in the market. Likewise, ciprofloxacin (500 mg) pack of 10 tablets will be available at Rs 20.10 against the market price of Rs 97. Nimesulide tablet (100 mg) pack of 10 will be sold at Rs 2.50 in the stores against the market price of Rs 25.

Prices of the medicines are fixed taking into account the cost of manufacturing, reasonable margin to cover other expenses like transportation, profit, retail expenses and still the drugs would be made available at substantially lower prices compared to the market prices, sources said.

Prices of some of drugs sold at generic stores: Click to View Table