Soon, exclusive generic drug stores to come up at KGMU

LUCKNOW: The process for opening exclusive generic drug stores on the King George’s Medical University campus began on Wednesday with an inspection by the central health ministry team.

The university aims to open one shop each for all departments.

“The next step is to float the tender,” said Prof Ajai Singh, in charge of the Jan Aushadhi Kendra (JAK) scheme, under which these shops will be opened.

At present there are medicine shops being run by the KGMU’s welfare society that gives certain percentage of discount on branded drugs to patients.

However, with purely generic drug stores coming up, the medicine expense will go down considerably.

There are two types of generic drugs – one is branded generic and the other purely generic.

The branded generic drugs are currently being sold from two shops run under the AMRUT scheme on the KGMU campus, on a trial basis.

“The idea behind pure generic drugs store is to make low cost treatment available to patients here. We have the lowest fee and other charges and if we can provide low cost quality drugs this will be an added benefit for patients,” said Prof Singh.

The medical university is planning to start with 10 generic drug stores which will be handed over to individuals via tenders. These individuals will be responsible for purchase, transport and sale of drugs and also to maintain proper supply.

The welfare society drug stores are run and managed by the university staff.

With the opening of generic drug stores under the scheme, the welfare society stores will stop running, but in phases.

The campus needs over two dozen such stores to fully replace other shops running on the campus.

The university officials hope that by September end they will have at least 10 JAKs running on the campus, as tender and other formalities will take two to four weeks time.