Govt funded medicine shops to come up in 600 districts

The Central government is planning to introduce fair-price medicine shops in 600 districts in the country, according to Union minister for Chemical and Fertilizer, Shrikant Jena.

“We have set a goal to establish at least 600 shops in 600 districts. We are already in discussion with the planning commission of India and the proposal will have a proper momentum within a month or two,” Jena said while addressing a gathering at the Phrama Convention 2012 seminar here.

Under this project, the government will provide Rs 2.5 lakh for each store to unemployed youths, preferably with a pharmacist license. The Centre will also provide them all 357 essential and generic medicines to sell at cheaper prices in these shops, in line with Jana Ausadhi Kendra where cheaper ayurvedic medicines are sold.

This project needs the help of doctors since they have to prescribe medicine by their generic name instead of brand name. Also, these stores should not be located inside hospital campus but near thickly populated area, he added.To rein in rising medicine prices amid high levels of poverty, the national government has proposed National Pharmaceutical Pricing Policy 2011, which aims at providing generic medicines at cheaper prices and also mandates doctors to write the doses strictly according to the patients’ need.Due to differences of opinion over fixing of prices of essential drugs, the project, which was mooted in October last year, is yet to take off.

A Group of Ministers headed by Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, last week, examined suggestions from NGOs and other stake-holders of the pharma industry over whether to cap the prices of the drugs on cost basis or by market driven factors.

The ministerial panel will continue to meet other industry related persons this week and will hand over its final recommendation over the issue to the Union government after gathering all suggestions.

But Jena refused to comment when it will do so.

While the Central minister acknowledged that there is vast scope for Indian pharma industry to grow, he criticized the state government for not coming up with attractive policies to entice medicine manufacturers in the state, despite having better connectivity such as rails and ports.

“The drug manufacturers are going to Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Uttarakhand even they don’t have a coastline because the state governments there have given some relief to the industries. If Odisha comes up with such proposals such as reducing excise duty on medicine production here, then definitely the pharma industries will come,” he said.