Drug sale licences of 44 Jan Aushadhi stores that sell generic medicines at affordable prices in the State will be cancelled soon following widespread complaints about their functioning, including shortage of medicines and alleged sale of branded expensive medicines.
The Bureau of Pharma PSUs of India (BPPI), the implementing agency of the Pradhan Mantri Janaushadhi Pariyojana, the Central scheme that promotes use of generic drugs, including those for cardiac diseases, cancer and diabetes, is also reportedly planning to tighten the norms for setting up these drug stores.
Nishanth Nair, nodal officer of the project in Kerala, told The Hindu on Tuesday that most of the soon-to-be closed down shops are in Ernakulam district. There are 456 Jan Aushadhi drug stores in the State and around 100 of them are in Thrissur district alone.
Mr. Nair said the system of online application to get drug sale licences had been stopped. In Kerala, it was found that three to four persons were found to be applying for licence within a radius of three to five km. Though it was against the BPPI norms, higher officials could not individually check or verify their credentials as the entire process was online.
“Despite the condition in the sale agreement that only generic medicines could be sold through Jan Aushadhi drug stores, some shop owners were found to be selling expensive branded medicines.
They were also found to violate the norm that the generic medicines distributed by the BPPI alone should be sold through these shops,” he pointed out.
Some of these shop owners were not willing to use the software mandated by the BPPI to monitor their functioning either, Mr. Nair claimed.
New stores, warehouse
The official said that around 50 new stores would be opened in the State in the next one-and-a-half months. A new warehouse would be launched in Chennai in August from where drug store owners could directly purchase medicines instead of relying only on local distributors, Mr. Nair added.