A basic IV unit costing Rs 11 is sold at 300 times more, representing a margin of over 2,800 percent. A 10 ml syringe costing just Rs 6.75 is sold for Rs 57.20, with an exorbitant benefit of 747 percent. An IV cannula, priced at merely Rs 22.50, is sold at Rs 424, 19 times more than its procurement cost. A nebulizer mask costing Rs 40 is traded and sold for Rs 715, with a benefit of 1,687 percent.
These are merely not just numbers. They are the findings of a survey, a market survey conducted by the Maharashtra State Pricing Monitoring Resource Unit under the State Food and Drug Administration to assess the pricing patterns of medical devices sold in the retail industry. The team examined medical devices like IV sets, syringes, nebulizers, oxygen masks and miscellaneous devices and found a margin of nearly 29 times higher than the procurement price on essential inpatient medical devices.
Defining the price hike as irrational and unjustified, Maharashtra FDA Commissioner Tukaram Munde has urged the Centre to review the pricing of most commonly used instruments in hospitals. In a letter to the Secretary, Department of Pharmaceuticals, Munde said, “This steep escalation is completely irrational and unjustified, as the initial procurement cost already fully covers the manufacturer’s total expenses, including production, product development, marketing, distribution, and profit margins.”
Highlighting that hospital patients critically require these non-negotiable surgical consumables during active treatment, Munde said that they possess zero bargaining power in IPD settings. He pressed for common inpatient surgical consumables to be brought under the regulatory ambit of the Drugs Price Control Order, DPCO 2015.
Consequently, the lack of strict statutory price caps under DPCO 2013 allows unchecked trade-level profiteering, imposing an unnecessary, severe, and unjust financial burden on the public,” the letter read further.
He suggested an inter-agency review and administrative, legal or policy interventions, like capping trade margins and strengthening monitoring systems.