A report submitted by the National Health Ministry states that people in Kerala consume a whopping Rs. 9000 crore worth of medicines per year. It means that an average person in Kerala is consuming medicines to the tune of Rs. 2,567 a year. This reinforce early survey results that point to the fact that Malayalees consume the highest amount of medicines and are also ready to spend huge amounts of money for that.

However, the National Health Account gives another more disturbing data about the craze for medicines by the average Keralite. It says that in a year Kerala is spending Rs. 34,548 on health, which translates to Rs. 9871 per person. This is four times the national average. Experts say that the numbers given by National Health Account could be more close to the reality.

It is evident that a study must be done to find out if Malayalees need to use this much amount of medicines. In Kerala around 88.43% of people are buying medicines using doctor’s prescription, while the rest 11.57% are self-medicating. This can lead only to more people becoming ill.

There are also reports that many doctors are given perks by pharmaceutical companies to prescribe certain medicines. Recently, a Bengaluru based pharmaceutical is said to have given perks worth Rs.1000 crore to doctors to prescribe the drug Dolo-650. Though there is strict law against giving perks like these since 2015, such practices are still continuing unabated. The reason is that there is no agency till date to monitor if the law is being executed. Most of the doctors are not even following the rule that only generic names must be prescribed.

It is a matter of concern that out of all the medicines that are sold in India, 13% are being consumed by the 3.5 crore of people in Kerala. The situation now is that many diseases are treated with medicines that must be used lifelong. This is the result of the medical field being commercialized. Even though there are better medical facilities in government medical colleges, most of the people, including the middleclass is rushing to private hospitals for better medical treatment. A person’s lifelong savings can be wiped out by a few days stay in a private hospital.

Moreover, many lapse in treatment in private hospitals are not investigated properly. This points to the need of a public health policy by the government. Incidentally, it is admirable that the Central Government has incorporated 34 medicines used to treat diabetes, Cancer, AIDS, pneumonia, etc. in the essential medicines list. Moreover, the Central Government must consider the need that more drugs related to Cancer must be included in the list.