CPI Parliamentary Group leader Binoy Viswam wrote to the Minister of Health and Family welfare raising concerns about the promotion of generic medicines over branded medicines, particularly about the directives issued by the National Medical Commission’s board of ethics. The directives ask doctors to prescribe generic medicine, but they seem to be in contravention to our existing drug policies. It has been pointed out that if the government is genuinely inclined towards promoting generic medicines, the first step should be to limit or ban branded medicines. Without such a decisive action, chemists will be at discretion of selling any brand, undermining the very purpose of this directive.
CPI MP from Kerala urged the Minister to reevaluate the policies regarding generic medicines, strengthen our public sector pharmaceutical units, and reassess the pricing of branded generics.
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