Why in news?
The National Pharmaceuticals Pricing Authority (NPPA) has decreased the price of Drug eluting Stents.
What are drug eluting stents?
- Stents are usually metal mesh tubes inserted during PCI, a procedure that widens the blocked artery by temporarily inserting and inflating a tiny balloon.
- Coronary stents are used to open narrowed arteries, reduce symptoms like chest pain and treat a heart attack.
- Even with stents, arteries can sometimes become blocked again. Drug-eluting stents can make this less likely to happen.
- Drug-eluting stents have a polymer coating over mesh that emits a drug over time to help keep the blockage from coming back.
What is the decision on stent pricing?
- India’s drug pricing regulatorNPPAhas further brought down the cost of drug-eluting stents (DES) from Rs.29,600 to Rs.27,890.
- While the cost of bare-metal stents has increased marginally from Rs.7,400 to Rs.7,660.
- The move comes a year after the NPPA slashed stent rates by nearly 85%.
- The NPPA also decided against the request of multinational stent makers for a new category for advanced stents.
What is the need for this move?
- In India there is a very high incidence of coronary artery disease (CAD) associated with high morbidity and mortality and CAD has become a major public health problem.
- The CAD drug market in India was an exploitive market system characterised by exorbitant, irrational and restrictive trade margin especially for stents.
- The NPPA’s analysis proved that profit margins for stents are as high as 400% and thus made an intervention for cost optimisation.
- The NPPA held meetings with eminent cardiologists, and found that its earlier move to reduce the price has led to an increase more angioplasties and reduction in bypass surgeries.
- Thus NPPA made this move to fix the ceiling prices of coronary stents in order to protect public interest.
What are the benefits from this move?
- Bare-metal stents have a significantly higher rate of restenosis (the recurrence of abnormal narrowing of an artery or valve after corrective surgery).
- It will help more people opt for DES that are technologically better and more advanced.
- This Price capping will minimise the expenditure in the health sector and allow more people to benefit from it.
- The new order also allows transparency and better government control and audit ease.
- Patients will have the option to get a stent and accessories from outside the establishment, and manufacturers are allowed only 8% trade margin.
- It encourages people to opt for better treatment plans and most importantly break the nexus of unethical pricing.
Source: The Hindu
