Medical Council Of India Wants the Doctors to Prescribe Generic Medicines Now!

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Like in many countries in the World we get various branded products pertaining to day to day use, in India too. These products are promoted by the companies in various ways to lure the clients. In India we get medicines in two forms. First form or group of medicines are known as branded medicines where the active principle of the medicine is sold under a brand name by the Company and second group of medicines are those that are sold with the name of their active principles. These are known as generic medicines. Mostly the medical practitioners prescribe banded medicines to their patients. They claim that since branded medicines are manufactured by reputed companies their quality is better than the generic ones. This is not true as many branded companies are also preparing generic medicines. Then, what makes the doctors to prescribe these branded medicines to their patients? The simple answer is ‘money’! The branded medicines are much costlier than the generic medicines and the doctors are given incentives in various forms to promote their medicines by prescribing them as a part of trade promotion by the Companies manufacturing these medicines. The Companies manufacturing the branded medicines do have a big chain of sales persons who promote their products all over the company. Company is paying a hefty salary to these people to promote and sell the branded products. These sales people in turn come up with various schemes or monetary benefits for the doctors to promote their branded products. This is very well known fact to every one. Since a patient doesn’t have any knowledge about the medicines prescribed to him/her, he/she is bound to purchase the prescribed branded medicines under duress. To curb this clandestine practice by the doctors the Medical Council of India, has asked the doctors to prescribe generic medicines instead of branded ones in the past. Since the doctors are not complying with the orders passed by the council, this time the Council strictly asked the medical practitioners in India to prescribe generic medicines and also asked the Companies manufacturing the medicines under brand name to renew their licenses to sell their products under generic names. Under the supervision of Central Government the State Governments and Union territories have come up with 122 medical shops by the name ‘Jan Aushadhi Stores’ where about 319 generic medicines are being sold presently. This is a welcome change and will be great boon for Indians in future who are spending a fortune to procure generic medicines presently! Your comments on the issue will be highly appreciated! Thanks !