Generic Drugs

[Guest guest]

Dear friends.

1. Indian Medical Associations all over the country please call for a total ban

on Branded medicines in India and ask the government to make generic drugs

available immediately in all chemist shops.

2. Call for a general meeting and pass this demand in IMA.

3. Send this demand to all state governments and central govt. Give them a time

limit after which we go for agitation.

4. No branded medicines should be available in the market; in any case they are

not needed if doctors are not writing them.

5. Call for a public debate by IMA and invite Mr. Amir Khan. We tell him that we

agree with his contentions and want to follow his advice promptly. We seek his

help to put pressure on the government to ban branded medicines. When we go on

strike on this demand, we need his and the Film industries support in the

strike. In case we do not go on a strike, he should guide us on the method of

agitation.

[Guest guest]

I wish we agitate only after the government FDA tightens up the manufacturing

facility and proper quality check on the generic drugs, many of which are

dangerous if bought from the open market. I have burnt my fingers on many

occasions. Earlier , when I was working at CMC, Vellore, generic drugs from a

limited time tested companies were bought by the hospitals and we were

prescribing the drugs by the generic names. It took me a couple of years to

realise that the drug store pharmacist was selling substandard generic drugs to

gullible patients and minting 300 to 500 percent profit. While a knee jerk

reaction to Amir khan is welcome, but I wish it was more graded and is used to

tighten up the mushrooming generic drug industry which is flourishing without

any checks and balance . There are very few USFDA approved companies which are

not able to meet the supply and demand- like government of karnataka antibiotic

manufacturing units. Every month we struggle to get antibiotics from them and

end up being told that the order will be further delayed by another 3 months or

so - when the patients continue to suffer.

It's good to be emotional about these issues, but not be counterproductive for

patients. I think we all should pressurise the regulatory bodies like dcgi to be

at lease half as good as USFDA when we will be confident of prescribing generic

drugs. A limited no of generic drugs are produced this way. If all generics are

produced in similar manner they will be 5-10 times more costly to produce than

the current non USFDA approved generics I think restricting the prescribed

drugs to minimum required will help a long way to the patients for which we need

to improve the quality of our conscience and that can be done from this instant

while we pressurise the government to make good quality generics available

across the country.

Dr Skand Trivedi

Prof & head

Department of Cardiology

C/o dr Prabha desikan

Sent from my iPad