Seeking complete overhaul of the Drug Prices Control Order 2013 (DPCO), trade union leader and Rajya Sabha MP, Tapan Sen, has written to Fertiliser and Chemicals Minister Ananth Kumar, urging him to take urgent steps to control “the gross perversion created in the market of the essential and life savings drugs.”

He said the order was severely affecting the right to access to those essential and life saving drugs at affordable price for the common people, suffering from diseases such tuberculosis, cancer, HIV etc.

Sen, who is general secretary of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), said the DPCO 2013, which was introduced by the previous UPA Government, “brought 387 odd drugs under the price control regime, but simultaneously the basis of stipulation of the ceiling price was changed from the cost-based approach prevalent earlier to market-based average price regime, thereby rendering the price control meaningless.”

Sen said the manner in which the drugs had been listed under DPCO suffered from “serious inadequacies”, defeating the very purpose of price-control of essential and life-saving drugs for the common people, adding that “nowhere in the world, price control measures of medicines have been determined on the market-based prices only.”

Sen alleged the UPA Government’s decision was more to promote the profit of big drug companies, domestic and foreign, than giving relief to people’s health care needs, and urged the Minister to bring back the cost-based regime and overhaul the list of drugs under control to include all drugs of essential necessity.

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