Blame game hurts generic drugs

Hyderabad: While Monday’s Union Budget proposed the setting up of 3,000 stores to sell generic medicines nationwide, doctors and chemists have started blaming each other on the poor sales of the inexpensive drugs.

Experts said the biggest drawback was that people were not aware of the names of generic drugs. Dr G. Srinivas Rao, senior general physician, said, “The government must concentrate on popularising the generic names and ensuring that quality drugs are sold.”

The All India Drug Control Officers Confederation has stated that maintaining standard quality will ensure customer loyalty.The confederation’s Uday Bhaskar explained, “What we are seeing is random opening of stores. Lack of counselling and lack of cooperation from doctors are resulting in few patients opting for generics.”

Experts say that generic medicine stores must be opened after taking the local doctors into confidence and ensuring that chemists stock the medicines that doctors prescribe.

 A senior doctor told this newspaper, “There are two views. Some doctors are not satisfied while others find that the response in terms of treatment efficacy is as good as branded drugs. These divergent views have raised a lot of questions and doubts on how serious the doctors are in promoting generics.”