On Janaushadhi Diwas this year (i.e., March 7th, 2022), Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi stated that the poor and the middle-class benefited from the 'Jan Aushadhi Kendras' that were set up to provide generic drugs at affordable prices. He said that the poor and the middle class saved around Rs.13,000 crore through these stores during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the wake of COVID 19 crisis, the 'Bureau of Pharma PSUs of India'...

-The New Indian Express A significant share, almost two-thirds of OOP expenses, are for purchasing outpatient care, especially medicines. NEW DELHI: Household Out-Of-Pocket (OOP) expenses on health services, especially medicines, continue to push over 55 million people in India into poverty, with over 18 per cent of households incurring catastrophic levels of health expenditures annually, says a WHO report. Despite India’s billing as the ‘pharmacy of the world,’ its population’s access to medicines...

-TheWire.in * The Parliamentary standing committee on chemicals and fertilisers has produced a report highlighting gaps in the availability of COVID-19 drugs and devices during the pandemic. * The committee has asked the national government why PSUs didn’t receive licenses to make COVID drugs when private manufacturers did. * The MPs on the committee also spotlighted widespread irrational drug use in COVID-19 management, despite the existence of a standard treatment protocol. New Delhi: The...

-Newsclick.in The roots of the present crisis lie in wrong policies adopted over the last two decades that have undermined domestic production of fertilisers led by the public sector and increased dependence on imports and production by the Private Sector. Indian farmers have been facing a major crisis because of shortages in availability and an unprecedented rise in prices of fertilisers. Fertilisers are a critical input for agriculture, and a shortage in...

-The Hindu Dependence on Private Sector is on the rise, they say Channai: Farmers supplying milk to the Tamil Nadu Cooperative Milk Producers Federation (Aavin) have urged the State government to increase procurement prices. Citing the example of another cooperative, Amul, which has recently hiked selling price of milk by ₹2 per litre, M.G. Rajendran of the Tamil Nadu Milk Producers Welfare Association said farmers in Gujarat, where Amul is based out of,...