Sunday, May 27, 2012

The Health of Healthcare

Satyamev Jayate has been the flavour of the past 4 Sundays now and it has been a stellar effort on part of the production team to garner the kind of attention which they have been able to. Whether Star Power of Aamir Khan, or issues which really hit home to a part of your conscience that removes the blinds from your eyes, and make you take notice of realities which are pushed to the back of your mind and are a part of that hazy babble of voices which you chose to ignore is entirely up to you. Ignoring is easy and yes I agree all of us have enough time on our plate and hence I feel that the time slot selected by the program is a stroke of genius.

Aamir today took on Doctors head on and challenged their God complex on national television. It will have a small effect somewhere which I am sure will be life changing for some, but end of the day Doctors are made to go out and earn money in order to break even with their educational expenses. This is a fact and is caused due to the failure of our system due to its inability to provide good quality public education (primary upwards and not just professional courses). So is the blame entirely on the student who has a dream of treating the ill? Not entirely.

Now I am no expert on medicine and the profession of treating (or practicing on) patients, however I am an employee of a reputed pharma company and today I do have a bone to pick with the Satyameva Jayate guys. I think that whenever you are trying to inform people with issues that have an impact on perception towards good or bad, the communication should be equivocal and everyone has to have a chance to explain their side. The show dealt with the issues of Corrupt Doctors brilliantly and it was almost wholistic. However, since the customer was facing the judgement, the seller (pharma companies) were naturally dragged into the arena.

Whether the Medical Rep bribed the Doctor or the Doctor asked for favours form Medical Reps? Answering that is like finding a solution to the Hen and Egg conundrum, so no use wasting time on that. The problem I had was the take on Generic Drugs and the Pricing of medicines.

Here it was a propaganda saying generics are a better and cheaper option and branded drugs are evil and force individuals to bankruptcy. Cost of making all Drugs is very low and pricing them high is unfair. BIG FAUX PAS.

The Show needed to speak about the following things too:

Branded drugs are sold by companies who discover them. A medicine hitting the shelf has to have passed form the most stringent of testing norms and safety procedures in order to be declared safe for consumption. The process from discovering a molecule to actually administering it to a patient is an extremely arduous, lengthy and expensive process. For every medicine hitting the market, more than a hundred molecules are rejected, but the entire process has to be carried out for those rejects too, and this cost has to be accounted for and recovered from that successful molecule. Now the company who brings this molecule to the market, is a pioneer, naturally will launch it as a Brand and earn a premium. Rightfully so as it did all the effort and at the end of the day its a business for GODS SAKE. Generic companies are freeloaders essentially (not entirely in a negative sort of way) who are masters at manufacturing. Their cost of getting the drug to the market hence is much lower, and they can sell it cheaper. But if the molecule wasn't discovered in the first place, Generics would not exist.

Secondly, India is a cheap manufacturing hub so naturally production costs are low, but we fail to notice that the top MNCs put in more in R&D than they do actually in Marketing and Sales as they are constantly trying to come up with solutions for the human (medical) condition. Generics don't put much effort in such causes. This fact cannot be entirely overlooked.

The golden mean to the problem - life saving drugs should be given generic licenses immediately so that they save the maximum lives possible, affordability should not be a question one has to face in a life and death situation.

Also there are so many Pharma companies that actually team up with Rural Hospitals and Healthcare programmes that make it possible for many villages to get excellent quality medications for very cheap prices, utilising the excellent distribution systems of these hospitals and programmes. I work for Novartis and we have such an initiative called Arogya Parivar that which does the exact same thing. Johnson & Johnson, Cipla, GSK all have these in some form or the other.

I am not trying to win brownie points for Pharma, neither am I saying that everything is fair in the Healthcare profession, but I thought that Satyamev Jayate should have allowed these aspects to be explained to the people. I am sure it would have helped in a better understanding of the scenario.

RIGHT PERCEPTIONS ARE FORMED ONLY WHEN INFORMATION GIVEN IS EQUIVCAL, and for me, today's episode just failed to provide that. PUBLIC OPINION IS DANGEROUS WHEN ILL-INFORMED.

1 comment:

ramya said...

Very well written. Totally agree to what you say. Would suggest you keep writing more. :)