The Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilisers has reconstituted the Pharmaceutical Advisory Forum that will give work as a platform to discuss the issues in the pharma sector among the stakeholders and advise the Department of Pharmaceuticals in policy making efforts.

Union Minister for Chemicals and Fertilisers will be the chairman and Minister of State for Chemicals will be the co-chair of the forum that will have representatives from all stakeholder associations related to pharma manufacturing and trade. Health Ministers of all the States, Secretaries to the Department of Pharmaceuticals and Health, chairman of National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority, Drug Controller General of India, joint secretary from DoP, director from DoP, drug controllers of all states, and joint secretaries from health and pharma departments will also be members.

The DoP will nominate 30 members from the consumer organizations and the NGOs to the body. Chemists associations will nominate 10 representatives. Two representatives each from the pharma industry associations, namely, IDMA, BDMA, OPPI, IPA, FICCI, FOPE, SPIC, Assocham and CII will be among the members. Each state and Union Territory can also nominate two representatives each on behalf of the consumer bodies. The tenure of the new forum will be for two years.

“The Government of India has announced drug policies from time to time with the major objective of ensuring abundant availability at reasonable prices within the country, of good quality essential pharmaceuticals of mass consumption and strengthening the indigenous capability for cost effective quality product. To help realize this and in order to provide a forum for a meaningful dialogue among all the stakeholders on various issues concerning drug policy, it has been decided to reconstitute the Pharmaceutical Advisory Forum in the DoP,” the official note said.