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India, world’s largest generic medicines exporter, still lacks assured free access to good quality generic medicines and the support is needed to use them to best effect for large section of its population, says a study by US-based pharmacy school.
The report by UCL School of Pharmacy entitled ‘Health and Health Care in India: national opportunities, global impacts’, said the unmet need for medicines is particularly highly in the context of preventing and treating the growing burden of heart problems, strokes and other non-communicable diseases (NCDs) like diabetes.
The report estimated that NCDs already cost India the equivalent of 12.5 per cent of the nation’s GDP in lost welfare terms. A similar (though falling) burden is still imposed by infections and events such as traffic accidents and violent deaths in groups such as relatively young women, said its co-author Professor David Taylor at a round-table here on Tuesday.
“India currently spends only a little over one per cent of its GDP on publicly funded health care, and only about 0.1 per cent of GDP on publicly funded medicines for the Indian people. These are very low figures, even by the standards of the world’s least developed countries. It would be tragic if plans for extending universal health coverage and increasing the supply of free generic medicines for those who lack the resources to purchase even minimal cost modern treatments for common conditions such as high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes are not taken forward as an urgent priority,” he said.
“Some people wrongly believe that steps like cutting the prices of products like new anti-cancer drugs that can only be used effectively in high technology settings will significantly improve public health in India. But this is not the case. Measures like imposing compulsory licenses on such medicines are in fact only likely to benefit well-off individuals. The mass of the population will gain from better day to day access to low cost but highly effective treatments that are already freely available,” he said.
The UCL School of Pharmacy report concludes that, without enhanced universal access to essential medicines and other forms of cost effective care, health improvement and social transition in poorer parts of India may stall. Given the size and importance of the Indian population this could in future have harmful global impacts.
Report co-author Dr Jennifer Gill said, “There are no easy answers as to how the world community can ensure that poor people everywhere get good access to essential medicines without over-supplying products like antibiotics or undermining provisions like patents that are needed to promote ongoing investment in medical and pharmaceutical innovation. We need strengthened mutual understanding to achieve better care in poorer areas and to sustain investment in innovative research, without which global progress cannot continue.”
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