Aamir presents plan for better healthcare

Bollywood star Aamir Khan had two simple prescriptions for a Parliamentary committee to reduce high health costs for citizens. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jun 22, 2012, 24:38:10 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Bollywood star Aamir Khan had two simple prescriptions for a Parliamentary committee to reduce high health costs for citizens. First, make doctors prescribe generic medicines rather than brands. Second, set up a regulator to ensure big pharmaceutical don’t take over smaller ones and monopolise the medicine market.

Khan and his team were invited on Thursday by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Commerce headed by BJP MP Shanta Kumar, which is considering the issue of Foreign Direct Investment in India, to make a presentation after his weekly show Satyamev Jayate.

For Khan, who has struck an emotional cord with his first television show, the issue of high prices of medicines was a reason for high indebtness in rural India. He reportedly referred to government studies such as that of National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) that over 65 % of rural Indians the cause of indebtnes was high costs of health.

Despite Indian Medical Association criticizing Khan for his views on the show, the actor pointed out at several improper practices being promoted by pharmaceutical companies to increase sale of their products leading to unethical medical practices.

A possible way-out suggested was making doctors prescribe generic medicines and let the consumers decide which brand they want to buy, said a member of the standing committee.

A recent Planning Commission study has pointed out that Tamil Nadu Medical Services Corporation had bought medicines at up to 1/20th of the retail price through bulk buying and made it available to people at an affordable price.

The market price of a strip of 10 tablets of Albendazole for worm infection was Rs 250 whereas the corporation procured it’s generic version for Rs 4.62. Arteether, an injection for malaria, cost the government one-tenth of its market price.

According to corporation, around 100 companies supply over 450 different medicines and surgical equipment for distribution free of cost through public health facilities (PHFs), the only state to have such scheme. “At a budget of Rs 29 per capita the Tamil Nadu is able to provide medicines to all indoor and outdoor patients in all public health facilities,” said the panel’s committee on providing cheaper drugs to citizens.

“The government can chip-in by selling generic medicines as done in Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan,” Khan later told reporters. The panel had estimated that the cost of providing generic medicines free of cost to all would be just Rs 28,000 crore in the 12th five year plan (2012-17).

Impressed by presentation made by Khan’s team, another committee member said, they highlighted how a few pharmaceutical companies were taking over smaller companies and monopolizing the market.

“Khan suggested a regulator for Foreign Direct Investment in pharma sector to check monopoly,” a committee member said, adding that data on number of smaller Indian companies been acquired my multi-nationals in the last few years was also presented.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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