NPPA Approves 50% Price Hike for Essential Drugs to Ensure Continued Availability

New Delhi: The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) has approved a 50% increase in the ceiling prices of 11 scheduled formulations covering eight essential drugs. This decision, taken during a full Authority meeting on October 8, 2024, aims to maintain the availability of critical medications in light of rising production costs.

The NPPA’s mandate focuses on ensuring that essential drugs remain affordable and accessible to meet the country’s public health needs. However, pharmaceutical manufacturers have been submitting requests for upward price revisions, citing factors like increased costs of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs), higher production costs, and fluctuations in exchange rates. These rising costs have made the production and marketing of some drugs unsustainable, with companies even applying to discontinue certain formulations.

The drugs affected by the price hike are crucial to India’s public health programs, with applications in treating asthma, glaucoma, thalassemia, tuberculosis, and mental health disorders. The formulations for which ceiling prices have been revised include:

• Benzyl Penicillin 10 lakh IU injection
• Atropine injection 0.6 mg/ml
• Streptomycin powder for injection (750 mg and 1000 mg)
• Salbutamol tablets (2 mg and 4 mg) and respiratory solution (5 mg/ml)
• Pilocarpine 2% drops
• Cefadroxil tablets (500 mg)
• Desferrioxamine injection (500 mg)
• Lithium tablets (300 mg)

Most of these drugs are low-cost, first-line treatments critical to the nation’s health infrastructure. The NPPA invoked its extraordinary powers under Paragraph 19 of the Drug Price Control Order (DPCO), 2013 to approve the price increase in the larger public interest.

This is not the first time the NPPA has taken such a step. In 2019 and 2021, the Authority increased the prices of 21 and 9 formulations respectively, also by 50%, to ensure the continued availability of vital medications.