National List of Essential Medicines(NLEM): 384 drugs on essential medicines list

Source: The post is based on the article “384 drugs on essential medicines list” published in The Hindu on 14th September 2022.

What is the News?

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has released the National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM) list.

It has added 34 new medicines and dropped 26 old ones from the previous list.A total of 384 medicines now features on NLEM 2022 under 27 therapeutic categories. 

Note: This revised list has come out after a gap of seven years.

What is the National List of Essential Medicines(NLEM)?

Essential medicines are those that satisfy the priority health care needs, based on efficacy, safety, quality and total cost of the treatment. 

The primary purpose of NLEM is to promote the rational use of medicines considering the three important aspects i.e. cost, safety and efficacy.

The NLEM was first formulated in 1996 and has been revised in 2003, 2011, and 2015.

In NLEM, the medicines are categorized based on the level of the healthcare system as P- Primary; S- Secondary and T- Tertiary.

Medicines that feature in the NLEM are called scheduled drugs. The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority(NPPA) fixes the prices of these drugs based on the wholesale price index inflation. 

For other drugs, companies are allowed to take a maximum hike of up to 10% annually.

Currently, scheduled drugs roughly constitute 17-18% of the estimated Rs 1.6-trillion domestic pharma market.

What is the significance of NLEM?

NLEM plays an important role in ensuring the accessibility of affordable quality medicines at all levels of healthcare. This will give a boost to cost-effective, quality medicines and contribute to the reduction in Out of Pocket Expenditure on healthcare for the citizens.

This is critical because the recently released National Health Accounts Estimates 2018-19 point to a high burden on households to pay for healthcare which is a key reason pushing Indians into poverty. 

For instance, in Uttar Pradesh, out-of-pocket health expenditure accounts for 71.3% of the state’s total health expenditure. For India, the figure was 48.2%.