CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 25Pharmaceutical Economics and PolicyHealthcare Systems and ReformsPharmaceutical Quality and Counterfeiting

The DOI matches its Crossref record.

The crisis in access to essential medicines in India: key issues which call for action

Open access
Bhargava, Anurag, Kalantri, SP·2013·Indian Journal of Medical Ethics
DOI 10.20529/ijme.2013.028
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

The government is planning to introduce free generic and essential medicines in public health facilities. Most people in India buy healthcare from the private sector, a compulsion that accounts for a high proportion of healthcare-related expenditure. To reduce the burden of healthcare costs, the government must improve availability and affordability of generic and essential medicines in the market. It can do so because India's large pharmaceutical industry is a major source of generic medicines worldwide. In this article, we discuss three factors that have impeded access to generic and essential medicines: (1) mistaken notions among policymakers, prescribers and patients about branded drugs and generic drugs in India; (2) high prices of medicines due to the progressive dismantling of the system of regulation of medicine prices, and (3) a drug approval and regulatory system that allows medicines (including fixed dose combinations) of doubtful efficacy, rationale, safety and public health relevance to dominate the market at the cost of access to affordable generic and essential medicines. The consequences of ill-health and wasted expenditure on drugs raise issues of public health ethics.Improving access to essential medicines in India is an urgent public health and ethical imperative. This should include improved public provisioning, a system of regulation of drug prices, and an evidence-based drug approval process.

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.20529/ijme.2013.028

Cites

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

We couldn’t retrieve this paper’s full text, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Citations

Cites

Still being checked.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Metadata

Authors
Bhargava, A., & Kalantri, S.
ORCID
Bhargava, Anurag
Venue
Indian Journal of Medical Ethics
Publisher
Forum for Medical Ethics Society
Published
2013-04
Volume
10
Issue
2
Pages
86-95
ISSN
  • 0974-8466 (ISSN-L)
  • 0975-5691
DOI
10.20529/ijme.2013.028
OpenAlex
W2412334396
Cited by
25
References
0
Citations by year
2025: 1 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 4 · 2016: 3 · 2015: 2
FWCI
3.91
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
cc-by-nc-nd
Locations
  • Indian Journal of Medical Ethics (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Pharmaceutical Economics and Policy
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Healthcare Systems and Reforms
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Pharmaceutical Quality and Counterfeiting
Keywords
access to essential medicines, generic drugs, drug affordability, drug price regulation, drug approval, fixed-dose combination, public health facilities, pharmaceutical industry, public health ethics, India
MeSH terms
Attitude to Health, Health Services Accessibility, Humans, India, Drug Costs, Drugs, Generic, Drugs, Essential

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review