[india-drug] Re: Drug prices (3)

["Pranav Gupta" <pranavgupta@hotmail.com>]

Drug prices (3)
******** 

Why blame others when we are at fault!

Hello all!

To introduce me, I am probably the most inexperienced and the most junior member (merely a medical graduate) in this group who found the way in, while searching for cheaper alternatives of the drugs commonly used. The thoughts exchanged here are surely made of gold but I seriously doubt if anything PRACTICAL is being done. I am not sure how many of the members of the group are into CLINICAL practice and actually prescribing drug, but being a clinician what I have found, during my graduation as well as my little clinical experience of 2 years, it is NOT the physician who decides the drug to be administered but the drug companies. The drugs prescribed are those that are actively marketed though their cheaper alternatives are easily available (e.g. prescribing a 3rd or 4th generation cephlosporin for a simple pharyngitis the might respond to co-trimoxazole as well).

Everyone here is crying about the cost of the drugs. I feel that drug companies are not the only ones to be blamed but the entire medical fraternity who prefer to prescribe the higher priced drugs over their lower priced counterparts for their petty gains (gifts, free samples of drugs, dinner parties, etc.). Half the battle is already over when we have changed ourselves.

Regrds,
Pranav Gupta
Junior Resident Doctor
Last day today at Rajan Babu TB Hospital (an institute run by one of the most corrupt and inefficient agency - Municipal Corporation of Delhi)
Delhi
Email: "Pranav Gupta" <pranavgupta@hotmail.com>