The Jan Aushadhi store at Red Cross Bhavan in Bhubaneswar. Picture by Sanjib Mukherjee

Bhubaneswar, April 4: Jan Aushadhi stores set up by the state government to provide generic medicines at a cheaper price in the city are facing shortage of medicines. Also, the unwillingness of doctors to prescribe these medicines has affected the sales at these stores.

The city has two stores — one each at Capital Hospital and Red Cross Bhavan — under the Jan Aushadhi campaign launched by the Centre. However, these two stores have failed to attract people. While the drug store at Red Cross Bhavan has a footfall of only 20 to 30 each day, most people are forced to return empty-handed from the store at Capital Hospital because of inadequate stock of medicines.

“If you go to the store and ask for five different medicines, in most cases, you will not find them all. So it is better to visit private medicine stores where you can get all the varieties,” said Lambodar Sahu, the relative of a patient at Capital Hospital.

Consequently, while people stand in queues to buy medicines from the private medicine stores at Capital Hospital, the Jan Aushadhi store bears a deserted look.

Life-saving drugs made only by government medicine manufacturers, including Hindustan Antibiotics Ltd, Indian Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Ltd, Rajasthan Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Ltd, Bengal Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals Ltd and Karnataka Antibiotics and Pharmaceuticals Ltd, are available at these stores. These two shops store only 60 varieties of medicine, which is evidently insufficient. Moreover, many of these medicines remain out of stock most of the time.

“It takes a lot of time to procure the drugs though we make requisition soon after a sample goes out of stock. There has been an inadequate supply of medicine for the past six months,” said a pharmacist at the Capital Hospital store.

Generic medicines come very cheap. For example, 10 tablets of Nimesulide-paracetamol, used to cure fever, cost just Rs 14. Similarly, Fluconazole, an anti-fungal medicine, sells for Rs 21.20 per 10 units. The price of the same drugs is nearly three times in the general medical stores.

Secretary of the state Red Cross, the implementing agency of the Jan Aushadhi campaign, Mangala Prasad Mohanty, admitted that there was a gap between demand and supply of these medicines and that was the cause for the current situation. “Timely and adequate supply is needed to popularise generic medicines,” said Mohanty. He also said the doctors’ unwillingness to prescribe the drugs was also a major concern.

The private agent, who provides drugs to these stores, also admitted that there was less supply of these drugs. “This time, we have supplied adequate medicines to the stores,” said Shyam Bhagat, proprietor of Shyam Bhagat Mani Pharmaceutical, the supplying agency.

Health minister Prasanna Acharya recently admitted in the Assembly that there was short supply of generic medicines in the state. “There has been a supply-demand gap. We have taken up the matter with the Union pharmaceutical ministry to strengthen the supply chain,” he said.