“How Pharmaceutical Sector Playing an Important Role in Healthcare System and How we can improve this ?”

कमाये दुखतपतनाम प्राणिनामार्तिहनाशनम

            Which means only desire relief from pain for those who are suffering.

Now back to the question “how it plays an important role in healthcare system” as we all know in todays lifestyle most of us are suffering from diseases most commonly diseases like diabetes, hypertension and many more lifestyle disorders. We cannot fight against these villains to mankind without having proper medicines and technology to fight , even today in the situation of global pandemic of covid-19 the major reason behind the current situation is lack of proper medicine to fight against the virus . Since for these  development of drugs and technologies the only sector that palys a key role is “pharmaceutical sector”. This sector is currently in its pre-flourishing phase as we all know without proper having key medicines to fight against the disease that are yet to come we cant survive. We can get the evidence of importance of medicines even from the old religious stories of Hinduism , in which during satyug when laxman was injured in the battle against ravanas son indraprasth ,only the medicines that vaid raj sushain prescribed which was brought by shri hanuman and as we all know todays vaid are the pharmacist. Today people take nutritional supplements these all are the products of pharmaceutical sector. If we look in todays scenario , vaccinations  , steroids,  eye solutions , antacids that we  use to maintain our body in a proper functioning and resist any change in normal functioning of the body we take  the products that pharmaceutical sector have developed. Till now we were talking about the role of pharmaceutical sector in healthcare, now coming to the topic  of   how we can improve this ? For this we should focus on the basic problems that todays pharmaceutical sector is currently facing. Because it is very important to know where we are lagging to improvise ourselves. If we discuss broadly ,we can find some major issues in this sectors are-

1. Compliance issues and good manufacturing practices
2. Highly fragmented industry
3. Low margin of profits due to government policies
4. Low input of research due to pricing norms
5. Stronger ip regulations
6. Less importance given to pharma proffesionals in the society

After realising the issues ,how could we improvise this sector for this we need to overcome these kind of speedbreakers on the road of this sector, since keeping in mind that these speed breakers are made for the safety reasons of our goodwill but still there are some loopholes which are currently making this sector progressing at a very low pace. Thus new policies and terms should me made that are for the welfare of the society as well as to this sector. Looking at the first issue of compliance the various national controlling authorities should take a proper vision over the quality and standards, inspections should be done on regular basis. Coming to the second issue countries like india are overloaded with generic manufacturers, resulting in high level of competitions in a short band of medicines and thus creating a less margin in the production of this drugs. This is a cause for concern because high fragmentation causes instability, volatility and uncertainty. This is certainly not a good omen for the pharma sector. Pharmaceutical companies can review their strategies to survive in a volatile environment . Some of the actions that can be taken by the companies are they can periodically review their product portfolio and build more customer centric products. The companies need to build their organisation in such a way that will enable better operational ability and agility. Now the biggest problem and the reason why some companies are not interested in investing in research and development is the low profit margins due to government policies ,though governments policies helps to give the benefits of the drugs to the poorest people . So the Government has to think of a way to promote the pharma companies as well. Funding for the pharma companies might be a way to move forward . Now pointing towards the fourth issue that need to be improvise is “lower inputs in research” , the main reason behind this is already discussed above  ,it directly effects the research and development of the companies. Simple enough answer, the lower the profits for the companies, the lower the investments. So the companies sight that due to the low income they are not able to develop products the way they want. After improvising and finding solutions of all the above issues the problem comes in to deal with “stronger ip regulations” , IP regulation has always been a thorn in the skin for the companies, especially the foreign companies. The companies strongly feel that the rules have to be amended and the so-called victim of the lax regulations have been the foreign entrants. The solution to this answer might be provided by the IPR Think Tank formed by the Government to draft a stronger national IP policies. Now most important of all that can be improvised neither economically neither by any government policies ,it can be improvised only socially ,in todays world pharmaceutical scientists , pharmacist are treated as nothing compared to doctors .but the society needs to understand and be aware of the importance of workers of these sectors, if they all stopped working the consequences will be not good for the mankind, everyone should see them with respect as same as doctors.   Now one more aspect is how could we improvise the healthcare with pharmaceutical sector ,one such role is played by clinical pharmacy where the pharmacist is recruited to deal with the adverse drug reactions ,medication errors,adverse drugs event . Every healthcare organisation should recruit clinical pharmacist to prevent this type of adverse consequences. Afterall “save life” is the main motto of medical sciences.