E-DRUG: India: Life-saving drugs to be cheaper (6)
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Dear E-druggers
Life saving drugs should be made available as cheap as possible by every country. This is all the more relevant in the developing countries, where availability and affordability of even essential drugs is a big question. The Health Departments or the Ministry of Health in the Government in these countries can play a major role in this issue by making compulsorily available all the Essential and Life saving medicines at an affordable cost to its needy patients and suffering people.
To cite an example of this daring venture by a Government agency is the successful implementation of the Essential Drugs concept by The Tamil Nadu Medical Services Corporation which is an important component of the Ministry of Health, Govt. of Tamil Nadu State in India. The strategy adopted in procuring and storing the essential drugs from different manufacturing units from all over India by a clearly worked out two tier Tender system made it possible to procure all the essential drugs at a very low cost. The benefits gained are saving money which is utilized for equipping the Govt hospitals with much needed life saving medical equipments as well.
This system is working very well in all the Government Hospitals, from Primary Health Centers to the Tertiary Care Hospitals in Tamil Nadu State.
But patients in the private sector still suffer from the exorbitant cost of even the Essential Drugs and Life saving drugs, which is not affordable to majority of the middle class people who depends on the private sector medical care facilities, since the government hospitals are always over crowded.
Hence the struggle to implement Essential drugs concept in true spirit should be continued by all those concerned so that the cost of the life saving drugs also will become cheaper and affordable..
Dr..S.Gopalakrishnan, MD, DPH
India
drsgopal56@yahoo.co.in