AIIMS staff demand additional drugs at generic pharmacy

In a written letter to the AIIMS Director, the Resident Doctors' Association (RDA) has demanded inclusion of 53 more drugs in the free pharmacy at the hospital and the need of an updated medicine list, which has not been updated in the last nine months. The RDA has also shown support to the initiative of prescribing generic medicines by doctors, in view of Prime Minister's vision, and have thus shared the list of medicines with their letter.

The RDA recently had a meeting with the in-charge of free generic medicines store at AIIMS and found out that the store has only 230 medicines available. Now they have written to the administration to include 53 medicines which are mostly prescribed by the doctors at the hospital.

"We can also collect a list of most commonly prescribed drugs from each department and help the institute update its list," stated Dr Vijay Gurjar, Former RDA President, AIIMS, in his letter.

"We have also realised that only one-sixth of the patients are able to avail the free medicines services due to unavailability of common medicines, so we have to make necessary efforts to promote the medicines," he added.

The doctors have also raised a concern that most of the available medicines are not in combination, which despite the need of the hour, increases the number of pills for patients, for example, TAB ECOSPRIN-AV, which is mostly prescribed in combination.

In their letter to the AIIMS administration, HLL pharmacy in charge said, "We have been operating since the last twelve months. During the startup period, we were instructed to stock only 199 medicines, which were later increased to 230. Out of these, 36 drugs are not generally prescribed and are facing expiry issues. These drugs can thus be replaced with the 53 commonly prescribed drugs."