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Urgent need to regulate drug prices, says PGI pharma head
“The price of a drug should be calculated on the basis of cost of production and the drug packets should show purchase price and MRP so that profit margin is exhibited,”PGI pharma head said.
Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh, department of pharmacology head Samir Malhotra, while addressing a seminar on affordable drugs organised by Indian Doctors for Peace and Development (IDPD) stressed on the need to regulate drug prices.
“There is an urgent need to regulate the prices of drugs so as to make them affordable to our population. Expenditure on drugs forms 67% of expenditure incurred on healthcare. This adds to the burden on the population because nearly 75% of healthcare is in the private sector in our country. The pharmaceutical industry is making huge profits which need to be checked,” he said.
Malhotra said the gross inequality in the vaccine supply to the population in developed and underdeveloped countries was also a matter of grave concern.
To ensure affordable drug prices, he said, the recommendations of the committee on high trade margins in the Sale of Drugs which submitted its report on September 16, 2015, should be implemented.
Former Punjab Medical Council president Dr G S Grewal, meanwhile, said they had given representations to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority and succeeded in getting the prices of Coronary stents reduced, but much more needed to be done.
“The price of a drug should be calculated on the basis of cost of production and the drug packets should show purchase price and MRP so that profit margin is exhibited,” he added.
