NEW DELHI: Centre has approved a price increase of key platinum-based chemotherapy drugs, official sources said Wednesday.
The green light to price increase has come at a time when hospitals in India have reported shortages of two life-saving chemotherapy drugs - Cisplatin and Carboplatin - in the past three weeks.
The shortage of the two cancer drugs was felt acutely as the Iran war has disrupted the supply of raw materials.
The notification on the price rise may come soon, according to official sources.
Both drugs are under price control and are on the National List of Essential Medicines.
The in-principle approval also followed representations by pharma companies to the Department of Pharmaceuticals about rising production costs due to the US-Iran conflict, which they said, has jacked up the cost of raw material.
Pharma companies have also urged the government to revise the cost of 82 medicines.
Top experts from AIIMS, Delhi, Tata Memorial Cancer Hospital and other top cancer hospitals had flagged the shortage of chemotherapy drugs, which they said could pose a serious threat to cancer patients.
The two powerful platinum-based chemotherapy medications are used to treat a wide variety of solid tumours by damaging cancer cell DNA and halting cell division.
According to Rajiv Singhal, General Secretary, All India Organisation of Chemists & Druggists (AIOCD), the government was considering increasing the prices of the two cancer drugs due to limited global availability of platinum-based raw materials over the past few months.
The first to flag the shortage was Dr Shyam Aggarwal, Chairman, Department of Medical Oncology, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, Delhi.
Describing the two drugs as the "backbone of chemotherapy," he said that the medicines are used to treat cancers including oral, ovary, breast, testis, gallbladder and lung.
"The government of India must ensure the production of these cheap drugs," Aggarwal said.
