KATHMANDU: The government has initiated measures to address recurring shortages of medicines used to treat cancer and other serious illnesses by moving forward with a long-overdue revision of medicine prices.
The proposed reforms include adjusting the prices of essential medicines to reflect rising raw material costs, which authorities say have contributed to supply disruptions.
A meeting of the Drug Price Monitoring Committee, chaired last week by Acting Director General of the Department of Drug Administration, Shivani Khadgi, decided to recommend policy reforms, including price adjustments, to prevent shortages of essential medicines.
According to Khadgi, medicine prices have not been revised for the past 11 years, creating supply problems for several products.
She said the market prices of some medicines have risen well above the government-fixed prices, making it financially unviable for manufacturers and importers to continue supplying them at the existing rates.
At the same time, authorities have found that the market prices of some medicines have declined while their government-approved prices remain comparatively high, creating the need for downward price revisions in those cases.
Under existing legal provisions, the committee’s recommendations will be submitted to the Drug Advisory Council, chaired by the Minister for Health and Food Safety. If approved by the council, the proposal will be forwarded to the Cabinet for final endorsement before being published in the Nepal Gazette and implemented.
About two weeks ago, Nepal experienced shortages of several platinum-based chemotherapy drugs, including carboplatin and cisplatin, as well as certain injectable medicines administered through intravenous saline, creating challenges for patients undergoing treatment.
Nepal has traditionally based its medicine pricing on the ceiling prices set by India’s National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA), and the same approach is expected to be followed during the upcoming price revision.
Khadgi said that while the legal process for price adjustment is underway, the government is maintaining regular consultations with pharmaceutical manufacturers, importers, and distributors to ensure the continued availability of essential medicines and address industry concerns in the meantime.
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