National Medical Commission should withdraw its guidelines on generic drugs, say doctors in Visakhapatnam

Doctors in Visakhapatnam oppose NMC's guideline to prescribe only generic drugs, citing potential compromise on quality of treatment.

National Medical Commission, a government regulatory body whose guidelines have to be followed by all practising doctors in hospitals, has issued a guideline that the doctors have to prescribe only generic drugs and not branded drugs.

This has not gone well with the doctors across the country and more so with the doctors in Visakhapatnam. They feel that by doing so, they will be compromising on the quality of treatment of the patients.

But to understand the issue one has to first understand the difference between patented drugs or branded generic and generic drugs. Only then can we explain why we insist that the guideline should be removed, said former Principal of Andhra Medical College and former Assistant Director of Medical Education, AP, P.V. Sudhakar.

In normal circumstances, a pharmaceutical company comes out with a new drug after spending crores of rupees on research and testing, which at times takes years. They then go for a patent, and as per the norms they are the only ones who can sell the drugs of a fixed period of about 20 years. This leverage is given so that they can get the cost that they had invested in research, testing and manufacture of the drugs.

After the fixed period, the formulae is given to other companies and they can manufacture and sell in the market and this is called generic drugs. They can sell the generic drug with a brand name or just sell it with the approved chemical name. If they sell under the brand name then they become branded generic and if they sell by the chemical name such as Paracetamol, then they become just generic drugs, said Dr. Sudhakar.

The former are called branded generics (as Calpol) and the latter are called just Generics (as Paracetamol).

A few senior doctors in King George Hospital (KGH), Visakhapatnam, say that any company wanting to market a generic drug does not have to undergo trials to show that the drug is effective, since the patented company has already done it.