Hyderabad, March 21: Here’s some good news: A medical store at the Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS) sells medicines at 80 per cent less than the market price. Surprised? Well, there’s some bad news too: It hardly has any drugs to sell!
Admittedly, the fact of its existence is a revelation. Mind you, it’s not run by roadside hakims or quacks but by the Department of Pharmacy, Government of India itself with the specific purpose of dispensing generic medicines at affordable rates to the aam aadmi. There are three such stores in the State. Two in Hyderabad __ at NIMS and the Uppal Industrial area and one in Visakhapatnam’s Civil Hospital. In keeping with its lofty ideal, it is called Jan Aushadhi.
On a visit to the store at NIMS, Express found neither the promised “Aushadhi” nor the “Jan,” its intended beneficiaries. Three private medical stores nearby were, in utter contrast, choc-a-bloc with patients and their relatives. The idle pharmacist at the store was “too bored”. Looking with disdain at a prescription of paracetamol, ciprofloxacin and cough syrups presented to him, he put it down with a firm “no stock” (stock) reply as they say in colloquial language. He repeated the same when asked about other medicines. A third query brought out the truth from the man who had by now lost his patience. The store has nothing except Nimesulide.
To his credit, he wasn’t lying. Barring a couple of shelves, the store was empty. The store manager was candid enough to admit that not even once in the last 10 months had they received new stocks. Drugs like paracetamol have not been available for many months. The store does not even have a landline telephone. “What is the use of this medical shop? It is closed half the time and mostly, there are no stocks. We have no choice but to go to private medical shops,” a relative of a patient at the NIMS lamented.
However, the Uppal store was well stocked since it was only a month back that it was set up. Going by the Jan Aushadhi website, more than 300 drug combinations, including anti-malarial, anti-diabetic, cardiovascular, anti-fungal, anti-inflammatory, “would be available” in its stores. Under this scheme, doctors are also supposed to recommend generic medicines to patients. But some doctors were not even aware of its existence while others said they were forced to prescribe “branded” drugs to patients because the latter “do not trust” government stores.
N Satyanarayana, medical superintendent of NIMS and in-charge of Jan Aushadhi scheme, refused to speak. “It is not your concern to bother about flaws in the initiative,’’ he said curtly.
—Agencies