NEW DELHI: Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad has said 39 million Indians are pushed to poverty because of ill health every year and around 30 per cent in rural India did not go for any treatment due to financial constraints, as per a WHO report.
Addressing a Conference on ‘Responsible Use of Medicine’ at Amsterdam, Netherlands, Azad said India is embarking on an ambitious target of achieving Universal Health Coverage for all during the 12th Plan period, where all citizens will be entitled to comprehensive health security.
Earlier quoting WHO’s World Health Statistics 2012, Azad said almost 60 per of total health expenditure in India was paid by the common man from his own pocket in 2009. The report states that about 47 per cent and 31 per cent of hospital admissions in rural and urban India were financed by loans and sale of assets.
India has already enacted the Clinical Establishment Act which will ensure that unnecessary drugs are not prescribed, he said.
Azad said the recommendations of the Consultative Expert Working Group set up by WHO on research and coordination highlights the fact that very little research is happening in neglected diseases and intellectual property rights have become a barrier to access to medicines.
“We need to consider the recommendations of the CEWG and ensure that adequate financing is made available to these diseases so that the poor and the vulnerable do not suffer from lack of proper medicines,” he said.
Free medicine scheme
Azad announced that India proposes to start an initiative for free supply of essential medicines in public health facilities to provide affordable health-care to people in the country and reduce their expenses on medicines.
The Health Minister said this initiative will promote rational use of medicines and reduce the consumption of inessential, unscientific and hazardous medicines.
Responsible and rational use of medicines is a crucial part of the national health policy and access to medicines is one of the vital tools needed to improve and maintain health, he said.
“Considering that provision of affordable medicines is the responsibility of the public sector and the state, a fine balance has to be maintained between the private sector which operates on the demands of the market and the responsibility of the state for ensuring a positive benefit risk profile of available medicines…,” Azad said.
He said there is very high out-of-pocket expenditure on health in India, of which a larger part is on medicine. “We need to look at adherence to Standard Treatment Guidelines, curbing unethical promotion of medicines by drug manufacturers, better regulatory control over prescription and dispensing of medicine and also to make the consumer aware about the hazards of self-medication,” Azad said.
He said India is facing an increasing threat of anti- microbial resistance and the Health Ministry has formed the National Policy for Containment of Anti-Microbial Resistance to tackle the menace as well as to promote rational and responsible use of antibiotics. -PTI
