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Source– The post is based on the article “Going beyond customs: On full exemption from basic customs duty for drugs, food imported for treatment of rare diseases” published in “The Hindu” on 3rd April 2023.
Syllabus: GS2- Issues related to development and management of health
Relevance– Issues Related to rare diseases
News– Centre has announced the full exemption from basic customs duty for all drugs and food imported for treatment of rare diseases listed under the National Policy for Rare Diseases.
To avail this exemption, the individual importer must produce a certificate from specified authorities.
Read more – Drugs for rare diseases get customs duty relief
What are arguments in support of the centre move to announce exemptions?
Rare diseases are a group of diseases that occur infrequently in the community. So due to lack of a large number of people with disease, there is no incentives for pharma companies to produce life-saving medicines.
Some of these diseases do not have any described treatment methodologies. For existing treatments, the drugs have to be imported and costs are high. They are inaccessible to a large volume of patients.
The NPRD estimates that for a child weighing 10 kg, the annual cost of treatment for some rare diseases may vary from ₹10 lakh to more than ₹1 crore per year. Treatment is lifelong and drug dose and costs increase with age and weight. The duty exemption will lead to substantial savings for patients.
What is the way forward for proper management of rare diseases?
The sheer number of diseases is estimated between 7,000-8,000 conditions, and the number of people with some form of rare diseases in India is estimated at 100 million. It makes it a problem that cannot be ignored.
The government must ensure that its directions are followed in full. It must find innovative solutions for this category of patients.
