New Delhi: Prices of 348 medicines, including life-saving drugs, will be cheaper soon by up to 80 per cent as the new Drug Price Control Order has come into effect. Industry experts said the implementation of the new drug policy will lead to slashing of prices of many anti-cancer and anti-infective drugs by 50-80 per cent.
According to the website of Department of Pharmaceuticals, the government has notified that the Drug Prices Control Order (DPCO), 2013, with effect from May 15, replacing the 1995 order. The new order will give power to the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Policy (NPPP) 2012 to regulate prices of 348 essential drugs. Drug Prices Control Order 1995 regulated prices of only 74 bulk drugs.
The NPPP 2012 was approved by the Cabinet on November 22, 2012 and later it was notified on December 7, 2012. As per the new drugs policy, all strengths and dosages specified in the National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM) 2011 will be under price control. According to the approved policy, prices of medicines will now be capped by taking simple average of all brands which have more than one per cent market share instead of input costs.
The DPCO 2013, issued under the Essential Commodities Act, 1955, will lay the framework of the drug policy and mechanism of regulating prices. According to it, the National Pharmaceuticals Pricing Authority (NPPA) will be the implementation authority for the new policy and the new DPCO....
08:00 AM, May 17, 2013
New Delhi: Generic drugmaker Ranbaxy has been fined $500 million by the US government after its subsidiary pleaded guilty to sale of adulterated drugs manufactured in India. It is the largest settlement by a generic medicine maker till date. It includes $150 million in payments for a criminal fine and forfeiture and $350 million in payments for civil claims. The adulterated drugs were made in Ranbaxy's plants in India and...
08:30 AM, May 14, 2013
London: Got a drinking problem? Pop this pill! A new once-a-day pill which could help problem drinkers reduce the amount of alcohol they consume has been launched in the UK. Manufacturers claim that dependent drinkers who take the drug nalmefene and undergo counselling can cut their alcohol consumption levels by 61 per cent. The pill, also known as selincro, has been licensed for use by health officials in the UK...
04:25 PM, May 06, 2013
The bombs that made Boston look like a combat zone have also brought battlefield medicine to their civilian victims. A decade of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has sharpened skills and scalpels, leading to dramatic advances that are now being used to treat the 13 amputees and nearly a dozen other patients still fighting to keep damaged limbs. "The only field or occupation that benefits from war is medicine," said...
06:14 AM, Apr 18, 2013
New Delhi: All antibiotics, tuberculosis drugs and other habit-forming medicines may soon have a label, warning users against over the counter medication, according to the latest draft notification by the Health Ministry. According to Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), India records 70 thousand new multi-drug resistant tuberculosis cases every year. India has already switched to using the second line drug Artemisinin for Malaria widely and nearly 5 per cent...
08:50 AM, Apr 04, 2013
FIFA medical chief Michel D'Hooghe says the abuse of anti-inflammatory medicine by football players is a bigger problem facing the sport than doping. ...
07:29 PM, Mar 18, 2013
Unhappy with the government's new drug pricing policy that will "reduce their profits" and "create hassles", 10,000 chemists across Delhi on Tuesday threatened to go on a strike March 15 if their demands were not met. ...
09:11 PM, Mar 05, 2013
Slower government approval for testing new medicines is threatening India's aspirations to be a fast-growing, low-cost hub for clinical trials, and has prompted some drugs firms to shift operations elsewhere, adding to their costs. ...
02:20 AM, Feb 13, 2013
Top Indian pharma players will continue to grow strongly at over 20 per cent in 2013, primarily led by exports to the US market, India Ratings said in its outlook for the sector. "We believe that top players of the sector will continue to grow strongly in 2013 (over 20 per cent per annum), primarily led by exports. Of the export markets, Indian pharma will focus on the US market...
12:14 PM, Feb 03, 2013
Jindal's website said the bangle created cellular coherence, allowing the body to be more capable of pain relief. ...
11:38 AM, Jan 29, 2013
Dr. Yusuf K Hamied of Cipla Limited was awarded the CNN-IBN Indian of The Year 2012 in the business category. He was awarded for taking on multinational pharma companies and making some of the essential drugs more affordable to the masses in the developing countries. Here's Dr Hamid's message after being awarded by CNN-IBN Honoured Guests and Friends, For the past 52 years, I have been actively involved with the...
12:22 PM, Dec 17, 2012
With Cabinet approving the new drug pricing policy, which caps prices of 348 essential drugs, medicines for cancer, diabetes, hypertension and renal failure will soon get cheaper. The new policy is expected to cover up to 30 percent of the total drugs sold in the country, according to industry reports. ...
11:52 AM, Nov 23, 2012
London: Long life ahead! A third of new generation babies are expected to survive to celebrate their 100th birthday, thanks to improvement in living standards and medicine, a new study claims. Dubbed the "new centenarians" because they have a one in three chance of reaching the age of 100, today's babies will work until the age of 70, be saddled with student debt until 52 and get married eight years...
12:35 PM, Nov 12, 2012
New Delhi: Does your teenage daughter often complain of backache and joint pain? Is your college-going cousin always lethargic? Vitamin D deficiency among youngsters, which causes such problems, is becoming common these days and is a growing health concern, doctors say. Vikas Ahluwalia, senior consultant of Internal Medicine at Max Super Speciality hospital, said that vitamin D deficiency among young people has increased over the last couple of years, especially...
04:38 PM, Nov 07, 2012
New Delhi: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday said the 12th Five Year Plan will enhance spending on health up to three times and that more medical and nursing colleges were needed to overcome a shortage of trained human resources in the sector. Speaking at the foundation stone laying of the Lady Hardinge Medical College project in Delhi, the Prime Minister also said that health indicators reflected a country's overall...
01:51 PM, Nov 03, 2012
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday slammed the government for being 'non-committal' on including essential drugs within the ambit of its price control measures. According to the apex court, the government has not taken any steps in checking the pricing of drugs in the country. Earlier, the court had asked the government not to alter the existing pricing system for essential medicines. Rebuking the government, the Supreme Court said...
01:49 PM, Oct 11, 2012
London: A British researcher who won the 2012 Nobel Prize for Medicine was once dismissed by his school teacher about his ambition to become a scientist as "quite ridiculous", the Guardian reported on Tuesday. Sir John Gurdon, 79, of Cambridge University, on Monday shared the prize in physiology or medicine - and 744,000-pound cash - with Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka, 50. Their ground-breaking work has given scientists fresh insights into...
10:43 AM, Oct 10, 2012
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2012 was awarded jointly to John B Gurdon of the United Kingdom and Shinya Yamanaka of Japan "for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent". John B Gurdon was born in 1933 in Dippenhall, UK. He received his Doctorate from the University of Oxford in 1960 and was a postdoctoral fellow at California Institute of Technology. He joined Cambridge...
03:32 PM, Oct 08, 2012
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday asked the central government to provide details of clinical trials being conducted throughout the country, their side effects and deaths, if any. The apex court bench of Justice R.M. Lodha and Justice Anil R. Dave, while asking the central government to furnish the details, also issued notice to all state governments, seeking to know whether they were being kept in the loop regarding...
01:12 PM, Oct 08, 2012
New Delhi: DNB CET is the eligibility-cum-ranking examination for entry to various Post-Graduate courses in modern medicine under the National Board of Examinations (NBE). NBE shall be conducting DNB CET as a Computer Based Test (CBT) from 17th to 20th November 2012 at test centres across the country. Candidates who are in possession of MBBS degree/Provisional MBBS Pass Certificate from an Institute recognized as per the provisions of the Indian...
02:33 PM, Oct 05, 2012
