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Cuttack, May 8: The state government’s initiative to provide free medicines to patients across the state under the Niramaya scheme is failing to evoke a positive response, say sources at the drug distribution centre (DDC) at SCB Medical College and Hospital here.
Around 300 varieties of medicines are available at the DDC here for free but patients are still buying medicines from private drugstores instead, apparently due to quality concerns.
“The medicines that you get at the DDC are like chalk powder. They do not provide relief even from regular ailments like common cold,” says Parameswar Dalei from Jajpur. “Regardless of what doctors prescribe at the hospital, patients are still going to private drugstores for their medicines,” Dalei adds.
Narendra Pati, a resident of Station Bazaar in the city, says he is a witness to the inefficacy of the medicines. “I’ve been suffering from acute acidity for the last few months. A doctor at SCB prescribed a drug which I took from the DDC, but it did not work. I then went to a private medical store, where I was given an over-the-counter alternative costing `14 per tablet. It worked wonders and now I’m able to sleep at night,” Pati says.
The free medicine scheme was widely seen as a death knell for medical representatives in the state. However, some are confident that the scheme will have no more than a marginal impact. “Most of the drugs that are prescribed by the doctors will be generic drugs, which are very cheap and hence not much of a profit anyway. There is also the question of how efficiently the scheme will be run in the future. Even after the scheme was launched, private clinics continued to witness the same kind of crowds that it had in the past and so did private drugstores. Health is one issue where one can make no compromise, and so people will continue to visit reputed private clinics for their ailments,” said a medical representative wishing to remain unnamed.
“The scheme won’t be a success unless there is an all-round improvement in facilities offered by government hospitals. Most of the specialists at government hospitals have their own private clinics where they work in the evenings. These clinics see a large number of patients most of who are also from the underprivileged section of society. They spend from their own pockets as health is a crucial issue which they don’t want to take lightly,” said Nabin Lenka, a resident of
Link Road.
