AGARTALA, Jan 25 (TIWN): Aiming to provide cheaper options to costly medicines, the 7th Generic Medicine Counter has been inaugurated on Monday at Belonia Sub-divisional Hospital.

The store has been initiated under the Jan Aushadhi Scheme of Department of Pharmaceuticals.

The project, despite all good intentions of providing cheaper options to costly drugs, is yet to catch up among the general public and even among doctors.

However, with the skyrocketing costs of healthcare and the medicines in recent times, choosing generic drugs may be the only way to keep costs lower because Generic items are available at very low price compare to the branded counter parts while providing same efficacy.

More centers to be inaugurated at Khowai, Santir Bazaar and Teliamura.

Tripura Markfed, an apex body of govt cooperatives of the state has been managing the counters of generic medicine with cooperation of the Health & Family Welfare Department of Tripura.

The programme was inaugurated by Health Minister Badal Chowdhury in the presence of other dignitaries.

Around 225 varieties of quality Generic Medicines at far lesser costs than similarly available branded drugs are being made available to the patients and thus saving their out of pocket expenditures on drugs.

Research works throughout the world show that generics work just as well as brand name drugs. Generic drugs have the same active ingredients as branded drugs but are much cheaper than the brand-name drugs.

To ensure the availability of quality medicines at affordable prices to all, the Dept of Pharmaceutical, Union Ministry of Chemical & Fertilizers, decided to launch in 2008 a nation-wide campaign viz ‘Jan Aushadhi’ as a direct market intervention strategy.

However, it is to be mentioned that though the Government has asked to prescribe generic medicine as much as possible most of the doctors do not bothered about the benefits of the patients rather they focus on their own benefits and profits.