Daya Sagar
JAMMU: With the conditions in hand it will not be an overstatement to say that these days that for some families the burden of health care expenses could at occasions be more fatal than the disease itself. With growing technology and access to information more and more people aspire for timely health care supported by adequate clinical investigations and fairly adequate drugging. So has hence, also increased the requirement of financial resources for health care.
Commercialisation in health sector too has taken to unfair roots in the otherwise noble / pious health care sector / profession and the support systems comprising of prescribing clinical investigations & drugs. And to add to that the people in general have lost faith in the truthfulness of the public sector health care infrastructure even for general healthcare inspite of government spending crores of rupees from the state exchequer on healthcare and medical education.
No doubt adequate clinical investigations and drugging is must for timely and sustained relief to patients. But these days commercial interests have more percolated even into prescription writing, than the medical ethics should have.
The drug manufacturing and marketing, these days, has been at places infested with more of unfair pricing than compromising on quality. In other words it could be said that drug manufacturer may not play unfairly with the quality of the medicine but some would mark the medicine with unfairly inflated MRP. No doubt manufacturing practices adopted and maintained by a manufacturer can make a difference even if the ingredients & technical grade material remain same but the quality difference of the end product cannot be so large that it could justify marking the product with more than 100% of MRP of the product of another manufacturer.
So, one of the worrying sectors could be the production and sale of medicines / drugs. No doubt any industry would need legitimate profitability for survival and growth. But when those in industry prefer profiteering over profitability , it must worry the society. And this is the case with the drug manufacturing and marketing industry of India of the day. Though many may contest that medicines and health care in India is cheaper than it is in UK or US but their arguments are not based on common reasoning since in India the margins of profit are unimaginably irrational in some cases.
It was what had attracted the attention of Ram Vilas Paswan, the then Minister for Chemicals, and he had come with the program of Jan Aushadi Store in 2008 but even after eight years the program ( JAS) has not been able to stand.
Imagine what great challenge a programme like Jan Aushadi Store would have thrown to some of the branded allopathic drugs that are marked with MRP and are sold under prescription of medical practitioners like Lipicare TG (Atorvastatin 10mg + Fenofibrates 160mg) 15 tab with MRP Rs 246;. Lipicard AV ( Atorvastatin 10 mg + Fenofibrates 160mg tab ) 10 tab with MRP Rs.146 ; Lipikind F (Aatorvastatin 10mg + Fenofibrates 160mg tab ) 10 tab with MRP Rs 50.80 and Jan Aushadi (Atorvastatin 10mg + Fenofibrates 160mg tab ) 10 tab with MRP Rs 24.39. See JAS MRP as only Rs 24.39 for 10 Tab and other some other brand as high as Rs.246 for 15 Tab. There could be quoted many cases like this. Surely such pricing would not be there in US or UK.
Had the prescription writers been that serious and concerned they could even pick out of other brands if not Jan Aushadi, but experience shows that mostly it is not done. Imagine the fate of the patients who have to regularly take allopathic medicines for hypertension ( BP ) , Cholesterol & Triglycerides management and diabetes. It is here that prescription audit and prescription writing by generic name have value and government of J&K must fulfill the commitment made at many occasions in the past.
( Daya Sagar is a senior journalists and social activist can be reached at [email protected])
