Now, post offices may hawk drugs

Drug firms eye 135,000-strong post office network.

A few months down the line you can queue up in your friendly neighbourhood post office to buy medicines. A proposal by the pharmaceutical industry to sell over-the-counter (OTC) drugs through the 135,000-plus post offices in the country is now under active consideration of the government.

OTC medicines are allowed to be sold without a doctor's prescription, but only through licenced drug stores. The size of the market is about Rs 8,000 crore.

"There are around 400,000 drug outlets now. If we add another 135,000 post office outlets, we can increase distribution of OTC drugs by around 30 per cent," said a pharmaceutical industry executive.

"It will be win-win situation for everybody. Our sales will increase manifold, the government will be able to gainfully utilise the huge idle capacity of post offices and people in rural areas will be able to easily access medicines," the executive said.

Says Ranjit Shahani, president, Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India (OPPI): "The major health care problem in India is not medicine prices. The big challenge is access to over two-thirds of our population."

Shahani said while Pepsi and Coke were available even in the smallest villages, an aspirin or a paracetamol tablet was not. There was no reason why OTC products could not be distributed through post offices, he said.

The matter is now stuck with the drug regulatory departments, which feel that such a move could lead to a proliferation of spurious drugs.