PGI keen on having people's medical shops

CHANDIGARH: PGI is exploring the possibility of opening people���s medical shops under the Centre���s Jan Aushadhi scheme and the matter was discussed with the Union health ministry nearly two months back. Also, the PGI governing body is pondering over the feasibility of inviting drug manufacturers to open retail outlets in the premier institution that caters to health needs of a vast populace of the region.
Importantly, the Centre has planned to open 40 jan aushadhi shops all over the country by March 4 wherein generic medicines will be sold at half the price of branded medicines.Primarily, five PSUs will supply medicines but several private sector drug manufacturers too had promised to help in the mission.
This was disclosed before the division bench of chief justice Tirath Singh Thakur and justice Hemant Gupta by PGI deputy director AK Gupta recently. Gupta has also informed the bench that the decision had already been taken to enhance the discount on MRP of medicines from 5 to 30% and a monitoring panel of doctors constituted especially to look into complaints of overcharging by chemists.
However, the chief justice was not particularly impressed even as he drove home the message: Everyone is in a hurry with a majority of patients and their family members not in a position to reap the benefits of your discount policy. Do they have the time to file a complaint.
The CJ asked the deputy director to take tangible steps for ameliorating the lot of patients. In fact, the CJ mooted the idea of super bazaar, suggesting that only one method might not suffice to fix the problem of over-pricing of drugs by unscrupulous chemists.
The deputy director also said since Punjab had set up a shop in Amritsar under Jan Aushadhi scheme in November last year, PGI had written a letter to Punjab health secretary four months back to seek assistance in setting up one such shop at PGI. However, even after a lapse of four months, Punjab health secretary was yet to respond.
A letter was also written to officer on special duty, bureau of pharma CPSU (under the dept of petrochemicals), New Delhi, but there was no response. At this, the CJ directed Punjab counsel to ensure that Punjab health secretary responded within a week to PGI���s letter. We are willing to call them. Tell us who is not responding, thundered a miffed CJ. In fact, the bench was peeved with chemists who were busy fleecing patients by overcharging for drugs readily available at reduced prices outside PGI. During the previous hearing, the CJ had advised PGI authorities to identify 12 drug manufacturers who could provide these essential medicines at low price.