European Journal of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences

A STUDY OF AVAILABLE BRANDS OF DRUGS FOR MALARIA AND CANCER TREATMENT IN INDIA

Sunisha Kulkarni*

ABSTRACT

Malaria is a major killer disease in India, especially in children and pregnant women. Malaria-associated deaths reported annually by the National Vector-borne Disease Control Program are in four digits However, these figures have been questioned by a recent study which calculated the annual deaths between 1, 25,000 and 2, 77,000, a figure which is more than 12-20 times the data provided by the government of India. The term cancer refers to a group of diseases which share similar characteristics. During the year 2001, nearly 0.80 million new cancer cases were estimated in the country and this can be expected to increase to 1.22 million by 2016 as a result of change in size and composition of population. The existing treatment facilities for cancer control in-terms of radiotherapy and financial allocation are woefully inadequate to take care of even the present load. The only way to fight this scourge under such circumstances is to have pragmatic programmes and policies based on currently available scientific information and sound public health principles. In conclusion, by this survey authors found that while India has a deserved reputation for being an efficient producer of low-priced generic medicines, much could be done to improve availability in the public sector and to reduce medicine prices in the private sector.

Keywords: Malaria, National Vector-borne Disease Control Program, cancer, low-priced generic medicines, etc.