8 anti-cancer drugs to be categorised as essential

Eight commonly prescribed anti-cancer drugs will soon enter India's National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM).

The entry assumes significance in the backdrop of a Supreme Court directive to the Union government, asking it to bring all NLEM drugs under price control.

The medicines that would be enlisted in the revised NLEM include costly blood cancer drug imatinib mesylate, which is sold by Swiss multinational Novartis under the brand name Glivec.

Other medicines in the list are carboplatin, daunorubicin, filgrastim, ifosfamide, mesna, oxaliplatin and clorambucil, manufactured by leading companies such as Bristol Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Amgen, Dr Reddys, Intas and Sun Pharma. Almost all these high value drugs are used in chemotherapy treatment for various types of cancers.

According to official sources, all the cancer medicines in the current NLEM list, which was prepared in 2003, would be retained.

"With this revision, we would have 31 cancer drugs included in NLEM list", the official said.

The new list, finalised by an expert panel appointed by the health ministry, categorises essential medicines under primary, secondary and tertiary segments.

While the current list has 354 drugs, the revised list would contain 348 drugs under 27 categories.

These categories include ophthalmological preparations, cardiovascular medicines, cancer drugs, immunologicals and anti-allergic.

Most of the medicines in the tertiary list are cancer drugs. While 181 drugs are common to all the three categories, 106 drugs can be found in the secondary and tertiary list.

There are 61 drugs that have been earmarked only as essential medicines, which are needed for tertiary level treatment.

Since NLEM drugs are essential, they form part of the basic stock that should be made available in public health institutions.

Minister of state for chemicals and fertilisers, Srikant Kumar Jena, told Business Standard his ministry would initiate steps to bring NLEM medicines under price control soon after the revised list gets notified.

Apex medicine price regulator – National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority – is also known to be readying a list of cancer medicines to study its pricing pattern.

Most high-cost cancer medicines are not available in retail medicine outlets, since companies sell them directly to patients.

The market size of such drugs is hence, not estimated by medicine price tracking agencies such as ORG IMS.

The eight cancer medicines are among NLM's 43 newly-added drugs. The committee had also omitted 47 drugs from the earlier list during the revision.