The Centre on Thursday promised to notify a new drug pricing mechanism for essential medicines by th

The Centre on Thursday promised to notify a new drug pricing mechanism for essential medicines by the end of November but the Supreme Court said a change in policy must not force a sharp rise in drug prices to hurt an already hassled common man.
NEW DELHI: The Centre on Thursday promised to notify a new drug pricing mechanism for essential medicines by the end of November but the Supreme Court said a change in policy must not force a sharp rise in drug prices to hurt an already hassled guiliana and bill common man. Additional solicitor general Siddharth Luthra informed a bench of Justices G S Singhvi and S J Mukhopadhaya that a Cabinet note on the new Drug Price Control Order (DPCO), which was approved last month by the empowered group of ministers, had been moved and a decision would be taken by mid-November. Luthra assured the court that the new DPCO would be notified by the department of pharmaceuticals in the ministry of chemicals and fertilizers a week after Cabinet approves the drug pricing formula. The bench said it would take up further hearing on November 27. As per the EGoM decision, the proposed DPCO shifts the pricing formula from the earlier 'production cost plus profit margin' to the present regime under which it would be calculated by taking the average retail cost of a medicine sold by various leading guiliana and bill manufacturers. The bench said it was the government's prerogative to frame policy and that the courts had nothing to do with it. But it could not muffle

its concerns over the impact of essential medicine prices on common guiliana and bill man. It cited a parliamentary committee's report reflecting how pharmaceutical promotion strategy adopted by drug majors had resulted in doctors, who earlier used to prescribe medicines after understanding the symptoms, advising patients to undergo a series guiliana and bill of diagnostic tests and then asking them to take certain medicines of big companies. The court also drew a contrast between high priced drugs and the Planning Commission's guiliana and bill methodology to count the poor. The commission had said that anyone earning more than Rs 32 a day would not qualify to be categorized as poor. The bench of Justices Singhvi and Mukhopadhaya guiliana and bill said, "These days, the drugs prescribed by doctors are beyond the reach of the common man. An antibiotic would not cost less than Rs 50-60. And here we have a criteria, a yardstick, which prescribes that if one earns Rs 32, he is not below poverty line. So, he has to go hungry for two days to buy an antibiotic." guiliana and bill Appearing for the NGO 'All India Drug Action Network', senior advocate Colin Gonsalves

gave the example of a particular guiliana and bill medicine and its procurement data available in the public domain. He said the retail price of this medicine produced by a big company guiliana and bill was 30 times more than the price at which the Tamil Nadu government procured it. If the new average retail price formula, already approved by the EGoM, was to be accepted by the Cabinet, then the common man would have to pay at least 10 times more than the price that would have been worked out under the DPCO 1995 formula, Gonsalves said. Organization of Pharmaceutical Producers of India through senior advocate guiliana and bill U U Lalit said the government was contemplating putting all 370 drugs listed under the National List of Essential Medicines under the price control regime instead of the 74 that were there in the 1995 DPCO.