Health Shocker: Govt buys medicines at up to one-20th of retail price

Difference of retail and government procurement price of essential medicines by up to 20 times has prompted the government to initiate a new policy to provide these drugs at an affordable price to citizens through health centers in the next five years.

Updated on: Dec 31, 2011, 17:44:05 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Difference of retail and government procurement price of essential medicines by up to 20 times has prompted the government to initiate a new policy to provide these drugs at an affordable price to citizens through health centers in the next five years.

The market price of a strip of 10 tablets of Albendazole prescribed for worm infection was Rs 250 whereas the Tamil Nadu government procured the same generic medicine for Rs 11. Arteether, an injection for malaria, was available to the state government at one-tenth of the market price. The price of Ceftazidime, an antibiotic for infection, was one-eight.

Tamil Nadu is the only state in India which provides free medicine for all in public health facilities (PHF). The 450 medicines are procured by a specialized body Tamil Nadu Medical Services Corporation at almost one-tenth of the retail prices. “Even 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 a Planning Commission committee on providing cheaper drugs to citizens.

Repeated government surveys have found rising health care costs on account of medicines as the second most frequent reason for rural indebtedness. “Studies show that in India the cost of medicines is anything between 50 to 80 percent of the total cost of treatment,” the plan panel’s report said.

A World Health Organisation report said that 68 % of Indians do not have access to affordable healthcare and medicines because of the high cost.

Despite the low costs for government, most of the times these medicines are not available in PHFs and people have to buy them from chemists, where the medicines are very costly. The prices of even essential medicines are not controlled by the government.

Tamil Nadu, where PHFs cater to half of the population, has been able to bridge this price gap and its model has been adopted by Kerala. Bihar and Rajasthan are in the process of doing so, government officials said.

The committee believes that providing free medicines through public health facilities across India was possible and will cost Rs 28,674 crore in the next five years, which is just 0.25 % of the Gross Domestic Product. Of the total funds required, the Central Government should bear 85 % whereas the remaining should be provided by the state governments upfront.

The proposal, which has backing of the health ministry, says that the money to the state governments should be provided by the National Rural Health Mission and proposed National Urban Health Mission. To deliver the medicines, the government would set up a specialized agency for procurement of medicines."It will also curb the trade of fake medicines as drugs available through PHFs would come with quality," a senior government official said.

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