With the Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP)'s ambitious Jan Aushadhi generic outlets project progressing at a snail's pace due to the bureaucratic apathy in the DoP, the union health ministry has directed the state governments to prepare action plans to open more stores in their respective states to promote the sale of generic drugs.

The states were asked to prepare the action plans in a communication in May this year again. But till now, no state has submitted the plan, prompting the Health Ministry to take up the issue with the Health Secretaries in the States. “The States may expeditiously prepare their plans and submit the same to the Ministry,” a note to the Secretaries said.

“The DoP under the Ministry of Chemicals & Fertilisers has initiated Jan Aushadhi Stores (JAS) Scheme for selling generic drugs to the common man. At present there are 102 JAS across the country. There is an urgent need to scale up JAS and have at least one such store in each district preferably located in the District hospital. It is also important that doctors in the public health system prescribe generic medicines which are as safe and effective as its branded counterpart and also substantially cheaper,” the note said.

The DoP has also submitted a business plan to the Planning Commission sometime back to expand the programme of JAS. The target of the DoP is to open upto 3000 stores taking the network upto the sub-divisional levels in the next few years.

The Health Ministry also listed a number of regulatory measures to be taken up by the States, in a recent meeting of the Health Secretaries. One of the key points was to increase the number of drug inspectors in the country. Going by the rough estimates of the manufacturing units, there would be requirement of 3200 Drug Inspectors in the country whereas the available number is only 900. There is thus, a strong need to recruit more Drug Inspectors in the country.

“At present, there are six drug testing laboratories in the country. It is proposed to add another 8 testing labs in the coming 12th Five Year Plan. It is also proposed to create 12 mini-labs at the Port Offices (Air and Sea ports). For effective regulation of the drugs and pharmaceutical products, it is important to have adequate testing capabilities. For the last few years, the number samples tested across the country, varies between 38000-40000 samples. There is need to increase the number of samples tested substantially. States would therefore be required not only to recruit manpower but also to set up new drug testing labs and to upgrade the existing ones,” the States were told.