State government is in talks with the Union health ministry to facilitate opening of 250 Jan Aushadhi stores in Maharashtra. As of today, the state has 15 stores with three in Mumbai. An MoU is likely to be signed soon to implement the operations of Jan Aushadhi stores in the state.

Around 90 private agencies and players have offered expression of interest for the same. The government is likely to fund Rs. 2.5 lakhs to the respective private agency initially to set up the store. Around 320 expression of interests have been received from across the country to set up the stores.

Union finance minister Arun Jaitley in his budget speech announced about starting 3,000 new stores in 670 districts in the country as per the proposal which is currently in the process of getting finalised.

There are a total of 263 stores as of today in 21 states of the country as compared to last year's figure of 99 stores in 16 states. Around 75 per cent of these stores are based in public hospitals.

The drugs at Jan Aushadhi stores are procured from the Bureau of Pharma Public Sector Undertakings (BPPI) that coordinates and markets the supply of generic medicines through an open tendering process in coordination with 34 distributors across the country with one nodal officer in each state in the country.

Says M D Sreekumar, chief executive officer, BPPI, "Costing as less as 5 per cent of the equivalent branded generic to as much as 25 to 50 per cent of the equivalent branded generic, the Jan Aushadhi medicine needs to be widely propagated by doctors who should prescribe it considering the fact that it is affordable and as efficacious as the branded generics. Government is formulating a plan to publicise the programme in a big way. Plans are also on to put in place an IT based supply chain management system to monitor availability of drugs in an effective way."

However, a major hindrance so far has been the limited number of doctors writing generic drug names in their prescriptions. This despite a diktat from the Medical Council of India that brand names of medicines should not be written in prescriptions.

The basket of price controlled drugs has now been widened to over 570 medicines to treat cancer, heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, tuberculosis and 164 consumables to be made available at one-fifth or one-tenth of the cost of their branded counterparts across the Jan Aushadhi stores in the country.

The Jan Aushadhi shops scan the original prescription and store them for future reference, while patients' names are also registered in their database for better surveillance and communication. It is particularly a boon for poor patients or those suffering from chronic ailments who require prolonged consumption of drugs.

The store is a reliable option for people who want to buy unbranded but quality generic medicines at affordable prices. There is a significant margin of difference in most drugs.