Reduce cost of stents, save lives: activists

MUMBAI: Consumer groups and patients are unanimous that health authorities need to crack down on profiteering in the medical devices industry, particularly cardiac stents. A recent Food and Drug Administration (FDA) survey has found that the MRPs of stents are inflated by a staggering 300 to 700%, as distributors, doctors and hospitals enjoy the ballooning profit margins.

The FDA, however, has little power to rectify the situation even though this device comes under the purview of the Drug and Cosmetics Act. In the light of the the findings, they have written to the regulator, the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA), to bring stents under essential medicines and thereby control the prices of these life-saving devices. Earlier attempts to do so have met with little success.

A senior administrator from a leading south Mumbai hospital says that the rot runs much deeper. “What the survey has missed out is the involvement of cardiologists in the entire chain. Most senior cardiologists have more say than hospital managements when it comes to buying stents from vendors. In fact, we get a requisition slip once the surgery is over and the stent has been used,” he says, adding that any attempt to break the nexus often leads to friction between the doctor and the hospital management. The practice also extends to orthopaedic implants, ocular lenses and several other devices.

Suresh Shetty, public health minister in the erstwhile Congress government in Maharashtra, said that it took the state machinery two years just to decipher the stent industry. “It is a complex Rs 800-crore industry, which is completely unregulated,” he told TOI. His ministry was credited with offering drug-eluting stents at record low prices of Rs 23,000 each under the Rajiv Gandhi Jeevandayee Arogya Yojana (RGJAY), when the market rates were Rs 90,000 or more.

TIMES VIEW

Many aspects of the trade in stents point to profiteering (as opposed to making a profit). The government must follow up on the FDA report by taking some action; mere studies and reports stating the obvious are of no help to patients.