Confederation of Indian Pharmaceutical Industry Small Scale (CIPI) has appealed to the Prime Minister's task force on drug pricing to finalise the list of drugs that needs to be brought under price control on therapeutic lines.

The confederation wanted to do away with the system of turnover based price control and suggested all anti TB drugs, anti Cancer drugs, anti epileptics, drugs used for treating diseases included in the National Eradication Programme for Diseases (TB, leprosy, Malaria), antidiabetics, anti hypertensives, anti AIDS / HIV drugs and anti hepatitis drugs to be covered by price control regime. The rationale behind the appeal was the essentiality and the high cost of several of these drugs.

According to CIPI sources, these drugs are often prescribed for long term / lifelong use and need to be made available at affordable prices. "The confederation is of the strong view that since the drugs of the above therapeutic classes are to be taken by the patients on a regular basis for a very long duration, controlling the prices of the drugs shall achieve the results desired by the Task Force. The BPL families of our country normally suffer from one or the other of the diseases of the aforesaid therapeutic classes," CIPI has said. The CIPI favoured the task force recommendation to fix ceiling price on the basis of weighted average of three leading brands. It said that if the government is considering some drugs to be under price control then a MAPE of 300% be allowed.

It also wanted the government to seek, except from small-scale manufacturers data regarding the name of the formulation, composition, cost price and retail / sale price for monitoring the mark-up prices of drugs.

The task force has met on September 16, 2005 to study the recommendations made by various industry associations including CIPI and is expected to finalise its report next week.