Union minister of state for chemical and fertiliser Srikant Jena (second from left) in front of the renovated Jan Aushadhi store on the Red Cross campus in Bhubaneswar. Picture by Sanjib Mukherjee

Bhubaneswar, Feb. 4: The city today got a model Jan Aushadhi centre, which is first of its kind in the country. This furnished store will increase visibility of this government-partnered initiative.

There were two Jan Aushadhi outlets in the city — one on the Capital Hospital premises and other one on Red Cross Bhavan campus. However, the location of these Jan Aushadhi stores was not attracting the customers. Poor patients were not getting any benefit from these stores due to their location and non-availability of several medicines.

To increase its visibility and medicine stock of these stores, the authorities remodelled one of them so that people can notice it easily and purchase medicines at a very low cost.

Jan Aushadhi is a scheme of the Central government that was launched in 2008 with an aim to provide high quality generic medicines at low prices. Medicines available at these Jan Aushadhi stores are equivalent in potency and efficacy to expensive branded drugs.

Secretary of Indian Red Cross Society — Odisha State Branch — Mangala Prasad Mohanty said that earlier it was just a counter and people had to purchase medicines from here.

“But now it has been renovated with an air-conditioned room where people can come and purchase medicines. This will be easily noticed and be helpful for the public,” said Mohanty.

He added that the store is computerised with e-billing facility and IT-based management of stocks. The interest of customers has been given priority during design stage.

Source said that this particular store was transacting an average business of around Rs 80,000 every month. It was very less in comparison to private medicines stores selling branded drugs. The officials said that the prices of some of the generic medicines sold at these stores were 14 to 16 times cheaper than branded drugs with equal efficiency and potency.

Inaugurating the model store, Union minister for chemicals and fertiliser Srikant Jena said that he would write to the state government to direct all the government doctors to prescribe generic medicines available at Jan Aushadhi stores in the state.

At present, there are 22 such stores in the state, whereas the country has 80 such stores till date.

“Entrepreneurs should come forward to take this Jan Aushadhi campaign forward as their participation will increase the number of such model stores and the generic medicine will get a boost,” said Jena.

These stores that were earlier selling very few medicines would sell 120 to 140 types of medicine and in the coming days medicines of all the therapeutic categories will be available.

Secretary of department of pharmaceuticals Aradhana Johari said that the look of this model store had become dazzling after renovation. “It will be a torch-bearer for other such stores in the country,” said Johari.