New Delhi: Ceiling prices of 464 formulation (amounting to nearly 7000 different stock keeping units) have been fixed by the government after the announcement of National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM), 2015 and Revised Schedule-I. This has resulted in effective savings to the consumers of the country Rs. 2288 Crore by way of reduced prices.
A section of the media had recently published a news item, stating that prices of 100 drugs may increase by 10% as they are now out of essentials list. The news item is misleading and is not in tune with the factual position.
The correct factual position is as under: –
Consequent to notification of National Pharmaceuticals Pricing Policy-2012 (NPPP-2012) on 7.12.2012 and notification of Drugs (Price Control) Order, 2013 (DPCO, 2013), all the medicines as specified in the NLEM-2011 were brought under price control. Ministry of Health and Family Welfare constituted a Core-Committee to revise the NLEM under the Chairmanship of Secretary, Department of Health Research and Dr. Y K Gupta, Professor and Head, Department of Pharmacology, AIIMS as the Vice Chairman. This Committee evaluated the medicines on the objective criteria for inclusion and deletion.
The criteria for deletion of medicines from National List of Essential Medicines is as follows:-
- The medicine has been banned in India.
- There are reports of concerns on the safety profile of a medicine.
- A medicine with better efficacy or favourable safety profiles and better cost-effective is now available.
- The disease burden for which a medicine is indicated is no longer a national health concern in India.
- In case of antimicrobials, if the resistance pattern has rendered a medicine ineffective in Indian context.
Based on the scientific criteria, Core Committee recommended inclusion of 106 medicines and deletion of 70 medicines from the earlier NLEM, 2011. The Pharmaceutical Pricing Policy entails the price control of only schedule-1 medicines which are included in the NLEM. The medicines, which ceased to be part of NLEM, 2015 and Schedule-1, will only be monitored as non-scheduled medicines. Non-scheduled medicines are allowed an increase of upto 10% in the prices every year, which is monitored by the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA).
In the detailed analysis of the number of medicines deleted and added in the Schedule-1, therapeutic category-wise in the revised NLEM, 2015, (indicated in Annexures) shows that there are sufficient number of medicines in each of the categories. These scheduled medicines represent a wide range of medicines for different therapeutic groups and will help in promoting medicines with better efficiency and favourable safety profiles, which are now under price control due to their inclusion in NLEM, which is in the public interest.
