Kathmandu, Feb. 20: A report prepared and made public Wednesday by Nepal Health Research Council (NHRC) said that people in rural areas of Nepal were compelled to pay high prices for the essential drugs due to the lack of government monitoring.
The people of Humla and Okhaldhunga districts were paying high prices for common medicines like paracetamol syrup, ciprofloxacin tablet and Vitamin B complex syrup, revealed the study report. The comparative research study was conducted in the three districts in the Kathmandu Valley and in two remote districts of Humla and Oakhaldhunga last year.
The study focussed on the variation of the prices of common drugs and pricing method of top selling eight medicines from Nepalese manufacturers.
"We have conducted this study particularly in Humla and Okhaldhunga districts in surrogate purchase of medicine,� said Dr. Sharad Raj Onta, member secretary of NHRC at the dissemination of the research findings on prices of drugs organised by the Council.
In comparsion to the drug prices in the Valley, people in Humla and Oakhaldhunga had been paying more than double prices for the common drugs, the report said.
Onta giving reason about the price variation in such places, he said that most of the manufacturers increase the price for trademark, brand names and travel expenses.
The Nepal government has also formulated a 13 member Drug Price Monitoring Committee (DPMC) under the chairmanship of chief of the Department of Drug Administration (DDA) but it could not play effective role as it lacked trained manpower.
Talking about the issue, Bhupendra Thapa, director of DDA also accepted that the department was not able to regulate and monitor the price of common drugs.
Thapa said that the price variation problem could be controlled if the government and the concerned bodies showed their readiness to put the list of drug prices in front of every retail shops.
Presenting the drug consumption scenario in Nepal, Dr. Kumud Kumar Kafle informed that in the last three years drugs worth Rs. 10.7 billion in retail price were consumed in Nepal. He said during that period, 40 domestic industries and 217 foreign manufacturers supplied the medicines.
A total of 825 wholesalers and 4,957 retail shops have been operating their services in the country. -
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