It refers to Prime Minister’s justified initiative to promote generic medicines which are supposed to be and should be much-much cheaper than branded medicines of same salt. But perhaps Prime Minister is not aware that promotion of generic medicines which presently have just 2-percent of the total market-share, may not benefit people with media-reports indicating a profit-margin of upto 1000-percent on generic medicines. Even practical experience reveals that even gap between printed Maximum-Retail-Price MRP and wholesale price of generic medicines has a huge gap providing 400-percent profit-margin over wholesale price.
A box of ten strips of ten capsules each of generic medicine Geomax-Plus even having fssai mark MRP printed at rupees 150 per strip with total rupees 1500 for complete box is available in wholesale medicine-market of Bhagirath Palace, Delhi at just rupees 425 only. Significantly it is sold as a substitute for branded medicine Absolut-3G with MRP of rupees 149 per strip of ten but available in wholesale medicine-market at rupees 120 per strip. Almost every generic medicine has MRP such fantastically high allowing huge profit-margins over ex-factory price. Another example is box of Mecofol-Plus containing ten strips of ten capsules each with total MRP of rupees 1320 available in wholesale medicine-market at just rupees 290. It is noteworthy that generic medicines are especially needed for poor persons where branded medicines of same salts are marketed at much-much higher price.
Need is to impose a maximum permissible limit of profit-margin between ex-factory price and MRP ensuring no incentives on sale of medicines. Since generic medicines at times are generally of very poor quality with no manufacturing standard maintained, it should be mandatory for every medicine including generic medicines to compulsorily have some government-certification like from National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority-NPPA or Food Safety and Standards Authority of India-FSSAI.
SUBHASH CHANDRA AGRAWAL