Demanding that a member from the Indian Medical Association (IMA) should be nominated to the Rajya Sabha and the member doctors should be included in all the government committees, both in the central and state, the IMA has submitted a health agenda to all the national political parties who are fighting a bitter battle to form the next government.

The agenda mainly focuses on a 24-hour primary and emergent healthcare management system to be made available free of cost to all citizens. It demands that the health budget should be enhanced to minimum 5 to 7 per cent of the GDP and there should be a higher fund allocation for medical research. The secondary and tertiary care must be high quality, affordable, effective and safe. For common health related problems, the central government should form a new cell with representatives from ministry of health, IMA, road safety, transport, chemical & fertilizer, women & child development, rural development, planning commission, HR ministry and education ministry. The essential drugs and investigations should also be made available free of cost.

The medical association wants that cost variations among different brands of drugs should be controlled and the quality and bioavailability of generic drugs must be ensured. The generic name of the drugs should be written in bold capital letters with name of the brand and the company name in small letters within bracket.  In the website of the CDSCO, prices of all the brands of the medicines should be given in order to help the doctors choose cheaper and  effective drugs.

Duty-free imports should be allowed for all essential medical equipments. Manufacture of indigenous equipment and devices has to be promoted and rationalization of charges of medical devices with price control should be introduced. Strengthening of the quality control mechanism of the drug control departments is the need of the hour. Ban on fake and spurious drugs should be effectively implemented.

The proposal wants the new government to pass the Anti-Quackery Bill in order to initiate strict action against quacks and to end quackery. IMA further wants that a doctor trained in one system of medicine should not prescribe medicines of other systems. The association says that it does not favour the introduction of a short-term course that allows homoeopaths or Ayurveda doctors to prescribe allopathic drugs.

On medical education, the health agenda underlines a fact that rural posting should be made part of the medical course, of which the maximum duration should be 6 years, and for the super specialty the period can be extended to 7 years. Out of these, one year should be set apart for rural services.

IMA’s health agenda also finds place for pharmacovigilance. It demands that a disease surveillance and adverse event reporting system should be made in place. There should be strong disease surveillance and reporting of adverse drug effects.

Another important aspect regarding security of the medical professionals, IMA wants that the medical profession should be taken out of the purview of consumer protection act (CPA).