The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) on Saturday capped
the prices of 31 essential medicines, including anti-cancer drugs and
antibiotics, bringing down the prices in the range of 1.5 to 35 %
The latest notification from the Authority has fixed the prices of eight
medicines and revised the ceiling price of 23 more. NPPA, which is also
looking at fixing prices of certain essential medical devices in the
near future, regularly caps prices of essential medicines listed under
the National List of Essential Medicines as per the Drug Price Control
Order.
The authority has the right to fix prices of the essential medicines
according to a calculation based on a weighted average of the same
medicine sold by different companies, with an added margin. For
non-essential medicines, it allows companies to hike prices by 10 per
cent on the basis of WPI inflation.
On Saturday Oct 08,2016, NPPA fixed the prices of eight medicines, including anti-cancer drug Imatinib, the price of which has been fixed at Rs. 72.03 per capsule. Fluoxetine, which is used to treat depression and other psychiatric conditions has also seen a price cap of Rs. 3.68
per tablet. Antibiotics Azithromycin and Nitrofurantoin, anti-viral
Ganciclovir, cardiac medicine Propranolol and antacid Omeprazole have
all seen price caps under the notification by the authority.
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