Kerala is making a major shift towards promoting the use of generic medicines among doctors and the public by making available generic variants of branded medicines through the Karunya community pharma outlets.
The new initiative, which will bear the brand name Kerala Generics, is another venture of Kerala Medical Services Corporation Ltd. and will be rolled out on April 1, Rajeev Sadanandan, Additional Chief Secretary, Health, told The Hindu .
Karunya community pharmacies were launched by KMSCL in 2012, to cater to the preference of Keralites for branded drugs, which are sold through Karunya at discounted prices.
“We are now giving people an option of buying safe and quality-assured generic drugs at low price. The generics will be sold through Karunya outlets initially, but will have a separate branding, colour code and a separate counter. We will pilot the scheme through four Karunya outlets and if the business model is successful, we will scale it up,” Mr. Sadanandan said.
The first ever State Health Accounts for Kerala (2013-14), done by the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), had revealed that medicines accounted for the single largest input in health service provisioning in Kerala, accounting for 39 per cent of overall health expenditure in the State, including government and household out-of-pocket expenditure.
The PHFI had pointed out that the most significant policy intervention that is required of Kerala would be a total shift from branded drugs to generics and a clear directive to all hospitals and medical practitioners to prescribe and dispense only generic drugs. This would bring down the current expenditure on medicines by two-thirds.
Kerala Generics is thus a major policy initiative by the government to reduce the spiralling out-of-pocket expenditure on health in the State.
Though the Medical Council of India issued a notification in October last, that every physician should prescribe generic drugs, there have not been too many takers for this, amongst doctors or the public.
The medical fraternity has all along held that they do not trust generics as there was no guarantee on quality.
“We have put stringent quality checks in place. The response from companies and the rates quoted exceeds our expectations,” a senior KMSCL official said.
“Doctors have not been complying with the directive to prescribe only generics citing quality issues. The government is now taking the lead to ensure that quality-assured generics are being supplied,”Mr. Sadanandan said.
KMSCL officials said that procurement process was nearly over and that final pricing was being arrived at. “We are making available at least three generic variants of each drug to consumers. Pharmacists will have a major role to play because we plan to have them dispense medicines after patient counselling. A massive campaign is also being planned to promote the concept of quality generics among the public,” KMSCL official said.
