New pharma marketing code targets to cut drug price

Free drug samples and trips to doctors push up medicine cost by 20%

With affordable health care being the government’s focus, the role of the pharma pricing watchdog, the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority, has become more relevant than it has ever been. To bring down the price of drugs, the government is also working on a uniform code for marketing that will prevent doctors from taking sponsored trips or free samples of drugs.

Such freebies make up for more than 20 per cent of the price of any drug, estimates suggest.

Vivek Hattagandi, founder of The Enablers, a brand management and field-force training firm, said, “On an average, medico-marketing promotion can vary from