While the Union government is pushing for opening 3,000 Jan Aushadhi Stores across the country to promote generic medicines, it is also contemplating to bring a new law to empower the pharmacists to substitute the prescriptions, according to sources close to the central government.

With this, a pharmacist will have the power to dispense a product prescribed by the physician with another one with the same drug. If there is no law to empower the pharmacists to substitute a brand for its generic version, the Union government’s mega project of Jan Aushadhi Kendras will not succeed as the doctors still prescribe only branded medicines. As part of the upcoming amendment of the D&C Rules, new rule may be brought for generic drug substitution. A government policy in this regard is required to promote generic products and to reduce the healthcare costs, sources said.

The government is aimed to reduce the healthcare costs of the people and provide quality drugs at affordable prices. All the developed and developing countries have adopted generic drug substitution policies to decrease healthcare costs. Then how can Indian government get away from it when the population of the country is more than 125 crore. So, India needs a unified medical prescription form as policy instrument to promote generic drug use, said the principal of a pharmacy college in Kerala.

Whereas, while sharing his views with Pharmabiz, the former HoD at the pharmacy department at Thiruvananthapuram medical college, Dr K G Revikumar, said as of now there is no need of such amendment to bring in a new rule to empower the pharmacists because the government has already issued orders to prescribe in generic names. He said following the direction of the government, the Medical Council of India (MCI) has issued circulars to all the states and doctors associations to prescribe only in generic names. So there is no need of a further enactment.

However, he said the pharmacists in India were enjoying this right till 1972 when a special clause was incorporated into Rule 65, 11A, which said ‘no person dispensing a prescription containing substances specified in Schedule H or X may supply any other preparation whether containing the same substance or not in lieu there of”.

According to Dr KGR, this clause was the only hindrance for the pharmacists to dispense other preparations with the same content till now. But with the order of the present government directing the medical council and the medical community to prescribe the generic names, the pharmacists are now free to substitute any prescription.

When contacted a specialist doctor in a government hospital in Adoor in Kerala, Dr Jayachandran, the ENT consultant, said doctors in his hospital have so far not received any circular from the government asking them to write the pharmacological names of medicines. He said all the doctors are still writing only the brand names as they are familiar with the brands only.