A news item on July 25, 2011 reported, “DoP (Department of Pharmaceuticals) moots National Authority for Drugs & Therapeutics (NADT) with Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO) under it”.
If I recall, some years ago, a Government of India (GoI) appointed taskforce had also suggested integration of the offices of the DCGI, CDSCO and NPPA along with all their powers and functions. However, nothing has fructified, as yet, not even the Central Drug Authority (CDA) Bill, which was mooted in 2007.
In the same context while taking a pause to look back, we note that in 2008 to help accelerating the growth momentum of the pharmaceutical industry of India through a more efficient government administrative and policy machinery, the GoI created a new department called the ‘Department of Pharmaceuticals’ under the MOC&F.
It was widely expected at that time that the DoP will be able to address the following key pharmaceutical industry related issues with an integrated approach to strike a right balance between the growth fundamentals of the industry and the Public Health Interest (PHI):
- Drug policy and pricing
- Providing access to high quality and affordable modern medicines to all
- A facilitating drug regulatory system
- An appropriate ecosystem to encourage R&D and protect Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)
- Addressing the issue of high out of pocket expenses of the general population for healthcare
- Fiscal and tax incentives required by the Micro-Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) within the pharmaceutical industry of India.
As stated above, all these will necessitate close coordination and integration of work of various departments falling under the different ministries of the government.
The key Objectives of the DoP:
Following are the stated key objectives of the DoP:
1 Ensure availability of quality drugs at reasonable prices as per the Pharma Policy
2 Facilitate growth of Central pharma PSUs with required support
3 Develop Pharma Infrastructure and Catalyze Drug Discovery and Innovation
4 Launch and Position Pharma India Brand.
The moot questions:
Considering all these, the moot questions that could follow are as follows:
- Do the objectives of the DoP effectively address the need to improving access to quality and affordable medicines to the common man with an integrated approach between all concerned departments of MOC&F and MOH&FW?
- Is the nodal department of the pharmaceutical industry – the DoP currently placed in the right Ministry to contribute more effectively to achieve the ultimate national goal of ‘ affordable healthcare for all’ ?
Need for greater co-ordinated approach:
The issue of access to quality and affordability medicines, reaching patients in conformance to a strict regulatory framework, will need to be addressed with an integrated systems approach.
As is commonly believed, increasing access to modern medicines will depend mainly on the following key requirements:
- Creating an appropriate healthcare infrastructure and delivery system across the country.
- Making prices of medicines reasonable/affordable to a large section of the population.
- Reducing high (80%) ‘Out of Pocket’ healthcare expenses of the common man through a well-structured healthcare financing/health-insurance model for all strata of society.
All these measures will entail very closely working together between the DoP and the related departments of MOH&FW. This situation calls for consideration of repositioning the DoP by making it a part of MOH&FW and NOT of MOC&F.
Pharmaceutical Industry: The areas of key importance:
Be that as it may, let us now try to have a closer look at the other aspect – the key areas of importance of the pharmaceutical industry for its accelerated growth and development and try to ascertain, if DoP is made responsible for all these critical areas, which Ministry they will need to deal with, the most:
1. Drug Policy and Pricing:
Currently DoP is responsible for an inclusive growth oriented drug policy and drugs pricing (through National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority, NPPA) under the MOC&F. This key activity of the department has immense impact on the performance of the pharmaceutical industry of India.
2. ‘Access’ and ‘Availability’ of modern medicines across the country:
Availability of pharmaceutical products is intimately linked to the quality of access to pharmaceuticals by a vast majority of population of India, as indicated above, depends on availability of requisite healthcare infrastructure and the delivery systems, besides the prices of medicines.
‘Jan Aushadhi’ scheme – a praiseworthy initiative of the DoP now seems to be a near disaster in terms of the project implementation. This scheme could have been more meaningful with the support of adequate health related infrastructural facilities and in tandem with the projects like, National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), National Urban Health Mission (NUHM), Rashtriya Swasthaya Bima Yojna (RSBY) targeted to offer better healthcare to the common man with a robust and integrated healthcare delivery initiative.
Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MOH&FW) is responsible to create such healthcare related infrastructure and delivery system.
3. Drug Regulatory System:
The drug regulatory system of the country, which is so important to the pharmaceutical industry for its rapid growth and development, is now operating at a sub-optimal level for various reasons. The dissatisfaction of the industry with this key regulator reportedly has reached its nadir.
Almost the entire Drug Regulatory System in India is being run and governed by the office of the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI), which comes under the MOH&FW. DCGI’s office is responsible for effective and speedy implementation of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act of India (DCA), which includes world class and ethical clinical trial standards in the country, marketing approval of all new products including exports, implementation of Schedule M (cGMP), all pharmaceuticals site registrations and effectively addressing the issue of spurious and counterfeit drugs, just to name a few. DoP has hardly any direct or indirect control over any of these key activities falling under the purview of the MOH&FW.
4. Biopharmaceuticals:
The Department of Biotechnology under the Ministry of Science and Technology currently looks after this emerging area of pharmaceuticals sector. DoP has no direct control over these activities.
5. R&D and IPR:
R&D and IPR related issues in pharmaceuticals/biopharmaceuticals are very important areas of the pharmaceutical business in the country. Although IP Policy related areas are looked after by the Department of Industrial policy and Promotion (DIPP), some contentious and highly debated IP related issues like, Regulatory Data Protection (RDP), Patent Linkage etc. are currently within the domain of DCGI under MOH&FW. DoP has no direct role to play in these areas.
6. High out of pocket expenses for healthcare:
In India ‘Out of Pocket Expenses (OPE)’ towards healthcare is around 80%. Such high OPE, especially in case of very serious and life threatening illnesses, like cancer, cardiovascular emergencies etc. could make a middle class household poor and a poor household could even be pushed ‘Below the Poverty Line (BPL)’.
Thus high OPE is indeed a very serious issue of the country, which can only be addressed through policy initiatives by designing appropriate health insurance/healthcare financing scheme for all strata of society in India.
For a large section of the society, this issue can be addressed by MOH&FW in consultation with Ministry of Finance, just as they have come out with an innovative and praiseworthy RSBY scheme for the BPL families. DoP does not seem to have much role to play in this area, as well.
Thus the objective of GoI to have greater focus on healthcare in general and the pharmaceuticals in particular could be better achieved, if the DoP is made a part of MOH&FW by breaking the independent silos in form of the NPPA, CDSCO, DCGI etc., now operating, especially, in these two ministries.
Key issues of pharma industry versus key objectives of the DoP: From the above details, if one compares the key issues and success factors of the pharmaceutical industry of India versus the key objectives of the DoP, one will notice a dis-conformity.
If this is allowed to continue even the all-important first objective of the department, ”Ensuring availability of quality drugs at reasonable prices as per the Pharma Policy” will continue to remain an illusion. It is indeed surprising to note that this objective does not talk anything about improved access to modern medicines by the common man, either.
Over a period of over last four decades India has experienced that only through increased focus on affordability, the objective of increased access to medicines by the common man could not be achieved in India. Besides other healthcare infrastructure related factors, high OPE still remains a key barrier to access to modern medicines by the common man.
Why is DoP trying to revive the loss making pharmaceutical Public Sector Units (PSUs)?
As stated above, the second objective of the DoP, which states, “Facilitate growth of Central pharma PSUs with required support” is equally intriguing. Everyone knows that all these PSUs created by spending tax payers’ money , miserably failed to perform and deliver even when the Indian pharmaceutical industry continues to register a CAGR growth of around 15% decade after decade. It is indeed difficult to fathom, which magic wand of the DoP will be able to bring these loss making and heavily bleeding PSUs out of continuous non-performance and governance failure in an era of fierce competitive pressure within the industry, by pouring even more from the national exchequer’s fund in the bottomless pits of losses of these PSUs?
I reckon, if these PSUs still attract interest of some good private buyers/investors with reasonable valuation, the government should unhesitatingly decide to unlock these values, sooner the better.
Conclusion:
In my view, if the DoP is expected to ensure improved “access to affordable and quality modern medicines to all”, as discussed above, the department should be repositioned and made a part of MOH&FW, rather than keeping it with the MOC&F, ignoring any possible political squabbles between the two concerned ministries, even in the coalition politics of India.
Such restructuring, repositioning and empowerment of the DoP in turn, will help achieving one of the key healthcare objectives of the nation, simultaneously fostering rapid growth of the industry making it a formidable global force to reckon with, both in the innovative and generic pharmaceutical business of the world.
This expected scenario, if gets translated into reality will justify the creation and existence of the DoP at the cost of huge amount of public fund.
Disclaimer: The views/opinions expressed in this article are entirely my own, written in my individual and personal capacity. I do not represent any other person or organization for this opinion.