Seeking permission to increase Medicine prices
It refers to drug-manufacturers seeking permission to raise prices of medicines to introduce new packings. Union government should turn down the demand because many-a-times fancy packagings are given especially to advertised medicines of general use to attract customers. Rather Union government should take opportunity to tighten packaging-norms of medicines in larger consumer interests. Gimmickry of packing medicines to fool customers should be checked by packing all medicines in either packs of 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 100, 200, 500 or 1000 units, gms or ltrs and thereafter in similar multiples of bigger measures in kgs or ltrs unless permission is taken from Union Health Ministry for some different pack for dose-wise administration. This will avoid cheating of consumers packing even commonly used advertised medicines like cough lozenges in strips of eight lozenges instead of normal ten because consumer normally judges the price per strip!
Many-a-times name of medicine is printed only once on a complete strip of tablets/ capsules, thereby causing great confusion when the tablet/ capsule under the printed name are consumed. It is difficult to recognise medicine in balance of the strip having no name of the medicine. Authorities should make it compulsory to print name of the medicine under every tablet/ capsule of the strip. Moreover it should also be compulsory to print/ emboss name of the medicine individually on each tablet/ capsule. It was indeed a welcome decision to make made it compulsory to print medicines? names in Hindi also on medicine-strips.
