NLEM, procurement practices and patient safety: Joining the dots

Dr Suresh Saravdekar, Director, The Rural Health & Education Centre, spoke on National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM), procurement practices and patient safety. He began by saying that the Indian medicine market is flooded with more than one lakh drugs. Referring to the same, he gave a historical background on the development of NLEM in India. Moving forward, he spoke about the role of NLEM in ensuring the availability of good quality drugs at affordable rates. He drew attention to the fact that there have been instances across the country where people have lost their lives due to poor quality of drugs or medicines. Further, he highlighted the missing links with medicine procurement system in public health that need to be connected in order to ensure good quality medicines reach the patients.

Dr Saravdekar also elaborated on bridging the differences between various generic medicines. Emphasising on the need to design a NLEM-based hospital formulary and state level procurement policy he said, “There is a need for comprehensive guidelines for selection, procurement and quality use of essential medicines in public health to have optimisation of funds, quality and of services provided to poor patients visiting these facilities.” Additionally, he advised the audience to promote rational use of medicines.

Lastly, he urged the audience to change their mind from quality assumed to quality assured in terms of medicine procurement. Further on, Dr Saravdekar also conducted a workshop on the same subject to provide more clarity on it.

Key highlights:

• Indian medicine market is flooded with more than one lakh drugs
• Need for comprehensive guidelines for selection, procurement process
• Promote rational use of medicines

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Healthcare Sabha 2017  Agenda Day 2

• Keynote address Cornerstones of availability, affordability, reliability of public tertiary healthcare services and quality medical education in India

1. Sunil Sharma, Joint Secretary, PMSSY, MoH &FW, GoI

• Envisioning India’s integrated health ecosystem

1. Angshuman Sarkar, Principal Consultant, ThoughtWorks Technologies

• Transitioning from a PSU scientist to a corporate leader: Retaining the values of social good

1. A Velumani, Founder, CEO and MD, Thyrocare

• Join the digital evolution

1. Dilip Bhosale, Head Marketing, India and Pranav Shah, Head Business Development, IT India, Agfa Healthcare

• Bridging delivery gaps in Indian healthcare through affordable medtech development and deployment

1. Dr Mohanasankar Sivaprakasam, Director, Healthcare Technologies Incubation Centre, IIT Madras

• Delhi’s ‘Code-Red’ programme: The need to scale up stroke care in India’s public health facilities

1. Prof MV Padma Srivastava, Department of Neurology, Neurosciences Centre, AIIMS, New Delhi

• Future of Imaging

1. Sabu Jose, GM – Government, OEM & Corporate Accounts – India Cluster, Carestream Health

• The single use dilemma

1. Sumit Marwah, CEO & Director, Dispoline India

• Tackling talent crunch: Improving capacity and competence

1. Ashish Jain, CEO, HSSC

• Health sector governance and resource generation

1. Prof Mukul Asher, Professorial Fellow, Lee Kuan School of Public Policy

• Dealing with NCDs

1. Dr Damodar Bachani, Deputy Commissioner (NCD), MoH&FW, GoI

• Workshop on designing an NLEM-based hospital formulary in a public health facility

1. Suresh Saravdekar, Director, The Rural Health & Education Centre