Presenting a case study, Dr Om Upadhyay, Medical Superintendent, Sir Sunderlal Hospital, Banaras Hindu University, UP, highlighted about the list of essential medicines that are defined by WHO to make medicines available, affordable and accessible to the masses. He said that we should have mechanisms and technologies that can create a healthy market place which enables competetive pricing.
He gave a brief history of how the list of essential medicines was generated. Further, he informed that the list is updated every two years and expounded its role in achieving Universal Health Coverage. He informed that the commission responsible for NLEM has identified five areas that are crucial to essential medical policies such as making essential medicines affordable, ensuring quality and safety of medicines, promoting quality use of medicines, developing missing essential medicines and bringing in accountability of all stakeholders to achieve UHC.
Going forward, he elaborated on his organisation’s drug policy and highlighted its measures to reduce the cost of medicines. He also praised government’s schemes such as Umang and Amrit.
He shared their action plan for the formation of a hospital formulary committee. The committee comprises Head of Medicine, Senior Professors from medicine, surgery and pharmacology, along with consultants and pharmacists. He went on to explain the functions of the committee to streamline medicine procurement procedure in terms of proper selection of medicines and central tendering e-procurement of of quality medicines. He said that as far as the tendering procedure is concerned, the hospital applies certain qualifications/ conditions for the applicant of the tender. The second function of the committee includes reformatory measures to promote rational and proper use of medicines by clinicians, pharmacists and nurses. He suggested that there is a need for monograms on proper use, dosage, precautions, side-effects, adverse effects, generic names, name of the manufacturers with details etc. He also emphasised on the role of a formulary in monitoring prices and implementing cost-effective measures. He also informed how NLEM will help in streamlining the process and ensuring quality medicines to the patients.