THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Price Monitoring and Research Unit (PMRU) will start its operations at Thiruvananthapuram at the end of March, so that prices of medicines and medical equipment can be controlled. This is the first monitoring unit in country. The state government has registered a society. PMRU will act with co-operation of state drugs control and district drugs control departments.
The move comes more than five years after the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) proposed such a system for the States and the Union Territories.
The new watchdog will offer technical help to the State Drug Controllers and the NPPA to monitor notified prices of medicines, detect violation of the provisions of the DPCO, look at price compliance, collect test samples of medicines, and collect and compile market-based data of scheduled as well as non-scheduled formulations.
PMRU –