After Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) of Maharashtra, a sub-committee of the country’s top drug regulator (DCGI) has sought bringing costly medical devices like cardiac stents and implants under the purview of the National list of Essential Medicines (NlEM) to ensure their easy availability to the poor patients.
last year, the FDA of Maharashtra had asked the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) to bring the medical devices including drug eluting stents under price control. The State FDA’s recommendation came after it found that price of most devices such as cochlear implant, bone cement and orthopaedic implants was hiked by over 100 per cent at least at the cost of the consumer’s pocket.
Echoing similar observation, the members of the DCGI’s sub-committee Drug Consultative Committee (DCC) in a recent meeting too noted that many medical devices were out of the reach of a common people because of their un-affordability.
“However, the Central Government has not seriously shown any concern in this regard to include the various costly indigenous and imported medical devices under the purview of Drug Pricing (Control Order),” the members lamented.
It is suggested that all the costly and un-affordable medical devices shall be included in the list of essential medicine and controlled under DPCO. It can be done whenever the list of essential medicines is again revised, the DCC said.
Though the patients have no option but to pay through their noses for these costly gadgets, the Health Ministry continue to deliberate on setting up the authority to regulate these items.
The FDA of Maharashtra’s report had cited the example of drug eluting stents manufactured by Abbotts Vascular Devices Holland BV, a Holland-based firm. These stents were imported into India by Abbotts Healthcare Pvt ltd at `40,710 and sold to the distributor Sinocare at `73,440 against a marked MRP of `1.5 lakh. The distributor then sold it at `1.1 lakh to Hinduja hospital, which in turn charged the patient `1.2 lakh, a near three-fold jump over the import price.
Rajiv Nath, forum coordinator of the Association of Indian Medical Device Industry (AIMED) attributed the high prices of medical devices to over dependency on imports.
“Corporate hospitals and MNC’s have lobbied for 0 per cent import duty in name of affordability and accessibility of medical devices over the last 10 years without any proof of passing reduction of maximum retail price (MRP) to consumers who have actually suffered by artificial inflation,” he said while stressing on promoting indigenous manufacturing through incentives and infrastructure support before moving on to price regulation.