Hyderabad pharmacies face hurdles in implementing cancer drug price cuts

Hyderabad: While the sweeping price cuts on life-saving cancer drugs have been welcomed as a historic milestone for patients, the actual availability of these cheaper medicines on the shelves of medical shops could still be days, if not weeks, away.

Local retail chemists and druggists in Hyderabad are facing a major implementation bottleneck and financial uncertainty over complying with the new pricing mandates.

Senior office-bearers of the Telangana Druggists and Chemists Association said medical shops in Hyderabad were currently caught in a logistical and financial bind. Retail pharmacies and independent stockists in the city had already paid upfront or secured short-term credit for multi-crore inventories of oncology drugs procured at pre-revision prices.

“There are major question marks over the implementation. Chemists cannot outrightly sell existing stocks at the new lower prices without facing catastrophic financial losses that could wipe out our operating margins. These drugs now have to be sent back upstream to manufacturers to reprint or update the MRPs, yet retail shops have already made payments for these legacy stocks,” senior office-bearers of the Chemists and Druggists Association said.

Industry leaders argue that regulatory authorities should have ensured that all cancer drugs with revised prices were available in sufficient quantities in the market before enforcing an overnight cutoff.

Caught between legal penalties for overcharging and massive financial losses on existing stock, chemists warn that the situation could trigger temporary supply bottlenecks until manufacturers issue credit adjustments and fresh stock bearing the revised MRPs reaches the market.