The State Government is planning more interventions to streamline the price of drugs and the proposed initiative to supply generic medicines free of cost from government hospitals,from November 1, is a step in this direction, Minister for Health V S Sivakumar told the Assembly on Tuesday.
He also said that more Karunya medical stores as well as Neethi/Maveli medical shops would be opened in various parts of the state.
Replying to a calling attention motion by V S Sunil Kumar (CPI), the Minister was, however, non-committal on the demand for issuing orders to doctors to prescribe only generic names of medicines to patients,instead of the current practice of giving brand names. Sunil pointed out that existing laws permitted conforming to generic names of medicines and states such as Haryana were following it.