National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority, early this month, brought 108 essential drugs more under the ambit of Drug Price Control Order, 2013 in addition to 348 drugs already under price control. These newly included drugs belong to 8 therapeutic groups but mainly for treating diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. The notification in this regard has been issued on July 10 by NPPA. Paragraph 19 of DPCO 2013, empowers the NPPA to fix the ceiling prices of any drug marketed in the country for any period if the Authority finds it prudent in public interest. Marketing of drugs for diabetes, cardiovascular problems and cancer has increased considerably in India during the last ten years as these diseases have spread to large sections of middle class and poor people. As these are lifestyle diseases, patients have to take these medicines for lifelong unlike infectious diseases requiring intake of medicines usually for a week or ten days. That would mean patients including poor have to spend a sizeable part of their monthly income on medicines. Pharmaceutical companies have realized the market potential of these two therapeutic groups and many of them have introduced all kinds of expensive drugs in the Indian market. While notifying the DPCO 2013, several diabetic and cardiovascular drugs were not included under price control for whatever reasons.
If NPPA decided to correct that deficiency in the Order by bringing these 108 essential drugs under DPCO and fixing ceiling prices to check excessive profiteering it is justified. Such a bold step was never attempted by the NPPA when the DPCO 1995 was in force and when many new drugs were introduced in the Indian market at very high prices. Existence of inter product differences in prices of branded generics and off patented drugs is a typical and absurd phenomenon of the Indian pharmaceutical market. This is certainly an exploitive trend seriously affecting the patient community considering the fact that different brands of the same formulation containing same active ingredient having identical strength and dosage are priced differently. Take one typical case of cholesterol drug, simvastatin. A strip of 10 tablets of simvastatin 10 mg of Ranbaxy is priced at Rs.120 whereas prices of 20 other cheaper brands of the same drug having same strength and dosage of other companies range from Rs. 35 to Rs.94. Simvastatin is one among the 108 drugs brought under price control now and physicians usually prescribe Ranbaxy’s brand. The combination of sitagliptin and metformin is perhaps the costliest product prescribed for the type 2 diabetic patients in the country. Two companies namely Sun Pharma and Merck market this combination at the same price of Rs.308 for 14 tablets for some years now. Such high price for a single dose of a drug required to be taken daily for lifelong in a poor country like India is not appropriate. Many more essential drugs are being sold in the market at unaffordable prices as these are all prescription driven branded generics. NPPA needs to keep track of such unethical pricing practices of pharmaceutical companies on a regular basis.
0 comments:
Post a Comment