CHENNAI: “Making quality medicines available at affordable prices has been a key challenge,” said Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his Budget speech last year. And for this, he announced opening up of 3,000 stores under Prime Minister’s Jan Aushadhi Yojana during 2016-17.
Almost a year on, there are 645 stores across the country, as shown in the official website and 700 functional stores, according to a source. There are 12 such stores in Tamil Nadu set up in places like Madurai, Dindigul, Virudhunagar, Tiruppur, Coimbatore, Sivaganga, Kanyakumari and Chennai.
On whether the government would be able to fulfill its commitment of 3000 stores by March, officials appear confident. “We will be able to do it. We have 25,000 applications lying with us for outlets across India. We have introduced 650 drugs so far and will be introducing a lot more drugs soon,” said an official working on the scheme’s implementation.
In the case of the Jan Aushadhi scheme, it stresses on the need for generics to be available for the people. However, this is also one of the factors that is posing a challenge.
“People thought that the medicines were so cheap so the quality would be bad,” said the official on condition of anonymity. “The rates of generic medicines are 5-15 times cheaper than that of branded medicines. It took us a long time to convince people that these are generics and that does not mean the quality is inferior,” he added.
The distribution license of generic medicines in Tamil Nadu lies with the EVS Group, based in Coimbatore where three stores are functional.
“When we started off two months ago, we did not know what the demand and response would be,” said EV Shiril, Managing Director of the EVS Group. “Now it has picked up and we have ordered and received a new batch of drugs that can be used in 25 outlets. These days people call us even before we open the shops and come first in the morning at 9,” he added.
The EVS group is looking at opening six more outlets in February and hope to increase the number to 25 in Coimbatore. There is a plan to expand the outlets in rural areas and provide mobile stores with pharmacists and doctors providing medicines to the public.
However, not all Jan Aushadhis are in the pink of health. Pharmacists at these stores have a tough time explaining the medicines to patients when doctors prescribe branded medicines. There is inadequate awareness and poor publicity regarding the scheme.
“The store is not familiar in the area,” said Ganesan of Vadamadurai in Dindigul where a Jan Aushadhi store is located near a clinic. “Those who visited the clinic attached to the medical store procured medicines at other medical shops and many locals trusted branded medicines over generics,” he explained.
Some Jan Aushadhi stores also suffer from a delay in supplying medicines. There is a need for the central government to make people aware of the scheme and boost the sales of generic medicine with new names. The first step is to get people to trust the medicine.
Tamil Nadu has Amma Marunthagam or Amma Pharmacy in addition to these stores. Amma Pharmacy offers a discount of 15 per cent on medicines and 10 per cent on injections.