By Parasharan Chari, Co-founder, Medkart Pharmacy
India’s healthcare sector is clearly one of stark contrasts. The pandemic simply brought the healthcare scenario of this country back in focus. On one hand, there are hospitals, institutions, pharmaceutical companies and universities that are lauded across the globe with breakthrough research and innovation and the best facilities available. On the other hand, the access to affordable, quality healthcare is skewed across different parts of the country, especially in rural areas and to people with lower income groups. In this context, it is important to understand that providing access to quality, affordable healthcare must not be limited to lower-income groups.
Affordable healthcare is crucial to reducing the financial burden of rising incidence of chronic diseases on the GDP. At least 30% of the population, or 40 crore individuals are devoid of any financial protection for health or any scheme of health expenditure support, according to a report by Niti Aayog released in 2021.
Furthermore, estimates by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) also indicate that healthcare expenses pushed 6 crore Indians beneath the poverty line in 2011. Thus, even a minimal drop in medicine costs will free several households from medical poverty.
Generic medicines can be complete game changers here by reducing healthcare and basic treatment costs. This in fact is even more necessary as the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) recently announced an increase in prices of around 800 essential drugs from April 1, 2022. The rise in drug prices works out at around 10.76% based on the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) data.
India is amongst the largest suppliers of generic drugs across the world and the pharmaceutical industry has helped in reducing the healthcare costs of many nations by exporting the medicines. It’s time now to achieve the same mission in India as well.
With increasing incidents of lifestyle as well as chronic diseases in India, the overall financial burden of medical expenditures on various households increased multifolds. According to data by the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), over 60% of deaths in India are now attributed to lifestyle diseases with 26% of all deaths happening due to cardiovascular diseases (heart attack, stroke, among others), which only reflects a higher incidence of these diseases.
Preliminary studies suggest that a household medical bill shoots up at least Rs 1,000 per month when a single member of a family is detected with a chronic lifestyle disease be it diabetes, hypertension, cholesterol, cardiovascular diseases, gastronomic disorders, among others. This means a household bill shoots up by an average three to four folds when an incidence of chronic, lifestyle disease is detected.
While controlling the incidence of these diseases is the way forward, making affordable medicines and treatment accessible will complement this in a big way. This is where generic medicines have a key role to play.
According to a study published in BMC Public Health journal, non-communicable diseases in India account for an economic burden in the range of 5–10% of GDP, significantly slowing down economic growth.
Preventing the occurrence of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) is a long-drawn strategy to reduce such an economic burden, encouraging widespread adoption of quality generic medicines will go a long way in drastically reducing the financial burden on individual households where people fall prey to NCDs. This will leave families with greater disposable incomes and keep economy afloat in the long-term outlook.
Through well-charted strategies, the state must be empowered to make the health of their citizens a priority and generic medicines can play a significant role here.
According to data compiled by Medkart, generic alternatives for allergy, cardiovascular diseases, blood pressure, diabetes, cholesterol, gastroenteritis and vitamin D3 deficiencies cost nearly 90% lesser as compared to their branded counterparts (image appended with molecule names for reference).
The rising economic burden of chronic lifestyle diseases on individual households underlines the need for adopting generic medicines, which can help reduce the financial burden on individual households. Internal reports by Medkart suggest that diabetes, blood pressure, cholesterol, cardio vascular diseases and gastronomic disorders are the top five chronic diseases for which people are using generic medicines.
Against at least 80% of the population in western countries opting for generic medicines, barely 2% of the population in India adopts generic medicines. With increasingly fast-paced lives loaded with stress, the incidence of lifestyle diseases is only increasing, which will add further financial burden on household medical bills. Medkart estimates suggest that adoption of generics can reduce the medical bills by at least 70%.
Yet another clear reason for poor adoption of generic medicines is a general lack of awareness about prevalence of generic alternatives and a lot of misinformation prevailing on various mediums regarding generic medicines.
Despite directions from the Medical Council of India (MCI), the practice of writing generic molecule names instead of brand names of medicines in doctors’ prescriptions is barely prevalent. Stricter and consistent enforcement of these guidelines by respective state food and drug control administration authorities will indeed go a long way in encouraging adoption of generic medicines in a big way.
The authored article is written by Parasharan Chari and shared with Prittle Prattle News exclusively.
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