Poor Price Monitoring By NPPA Motivate Cos And Trade Charge Higher Prices
Chennai, 23 March 2019: Although NPPA regularly announces ceiling prices of controlled drugs and medical devices, the pharmaceutical manufacturers and traders charge prices much higher than the MRPs on medicines and medical devices due to absence of price monitoring officers (PMO).
In the absence of efficient monitoring of retail prices by NPPA recovery of overcharged amounts from the industry and trade is becoming difficult. In a letter to the new chairman of NPPA, Dr Roop Nath Gupta, IPA leader and pharmacy academician in Jharkhand urged for establishing a proper price regulatory system in place to ensure availability of medicines and medical devices at affordable prices.
The NPPA should create posts of Drug Price Control Officers or Price Monitoring Officers under it to check this kind of overcharging on controlled category medicines and medical devices, he said.
Hailing the price regulating authority for bringing 23 medical devices under price control in last year, he said the manufacturers and traders all over the country are charging higher prices by violating all norms. The country needs an effective controlling mechanism to monitor charging of prices of price controlled drugs. Similar to the job of drug inspectors, DPC officers or price monitoring officers need to be appointed by the government for proper implementation of DPCO. Dr. Gupta wanted the chairman of the NPPA to send a proposal in this regard to the union government for a speedy action.
“NPPA should take steps to appoint sufficient number of PMOs as technical staffs and make the functioning of the regulatory authority in the proper way. If the common man should be benefited from DPCO, its proper enforcement has to be carried out,” he told Pharmabiz.
While controlling the prices of scheduled category products, a control mechanism is also required on products outside control as there is unjustified charging of prices by both manufacturers and dealers. In India, as on today, many graduates in pharmaceutical sciences are seeking jobs and they can be recruited for doing this job with suitable training.
He quoted example that for 500 mg 15 paracetamol tablets the MRP is Rs. 14.03, whereas Rs. 28 is charged for 15 tablet of the same medicine of 650 mg. Since there is no price control on this drug, the manufacturers resort to overcharging by slightly changing the dosage.
Further, he quotes, for sulfasalazine, sold under the trade name Azulfidine, a medicine used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, Rs. 44 is priced for 15 tablets of 500 mg. But a strip of 15 tablets of 1,000 mg of the same drug is sold for Rs. 177. This cannot be justified on the and the government should fix ceiling prices for all drugs manufactured and sold in the country, Dr.Gupta added. Pharmabiz