The Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council has suggested a complex combination of three pricing models to fix retail prices of 348 essential drugs to balance industry's concerns and public health. The proposal, however, has drawn the ire of drug makers who say it is a watered down version of the health ministry's proposals. The council has proposed that for Medicines facing "insufficient competition" or a monopoly-like situation, the retail price should...

-The Hindu   The Centre's move to introduce an experimental universal health package in at least one district per State under the National Rural Health Mission, with access to free generic drugs, is a welcome measure. But the larger mission to provide free essential Medicines to all citizens need not await the results of such pilot studies. It should be rolled out for poor and non-poor alike quickly. There is no time...

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Monday warned India that feminization of its ageing population could lead to a rapid increase in its number of widows. Reacting to a TOI story that showed how the majority of India's elderly are now women, WHO's representative to India Dr Nata Menabde said the trend has significant consequences for the health of older women. She said, "Women's longer life-spans compared to men, combined with the...

-The Telegraph The Supreme Court today issued notices to all states and Union territories asking them to explain unsafe and unhygienic sterilisation drives in violation of an earlier order for safe procedures. The move came on a PIL by a health rights activist who alleged inhuman sterilisations continued in rural areas in “reckless disregard” of the lives of poor women, especially in Bihar. In one case, 53 women were sterilised in two hours...

The medicine price regulator, the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA), has found a price fixing mechanism suggested by its parent ministry, chemicals and fertilisers, has failed to meaningfully lower the prices of key cancer Medicines. A group of ministers (GoM) headed by agriculture minister Sharad Pawar is expected to meet soon to finalise a pricing policy on drugs. The NPPA study findings may compel the ministry to seek other effective ways of...