Centre to decide on fixed price for cardiac stents

PUNE: In its proposal to regulate the pricing of cardiac stents, the state FDA had urged the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) to bring the medical device under the National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM). It recommended this following reports that trading companies were selling the device at inflated prices through a growing nexus of distributors and hospitals.

"Since cardiac stents are considered life-saving drugs, a fixed profit margin on them also needs to be stipulated for importers, distributors and hospitals to make it affordable," Kamble said.

An official from the NPPA said, "We submitted the proposal to the Union health ministry a month ago. We will initiate the process of including cardiac stents in price control order once the ministry approves the proposal."

State FDA minister Girish Bapat also met the Union health minister J P Nadda a month ago to take this issue forward.

"Bapat met Nadda recently and discussed with him at length about how important it is to bring cardiac stents under price control order," Kamble said.

Bapat remained unavilable for comment.