Retd pharmacist comes to the aid of the poor

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, June 10

A retired chief pharmacist from Nawanshahr Civil Hospital has started social service by providing medicines at cheaper rates to poor and needy people.

Under the Jan Aushadhi scheme of the government that was started in 2008, he has opened his centre and is providing poor people medicines.

Jaswinder Singh Patti (63) retired in 2015 and last year in April, he started giving medicines which, otherwise, are expensive in the market.

He said it was due to the arrangement of some doctors with pharmaceutical companies that they prescibed branded medicines to patients which are costly.

“Medicines like paracetamol and crocin which cost Rs 38, we give for Rs 8. For TB patients, a pack of 10 tablets comes for Rs 1,000, but we give it for Rs 491,” Patti said, adding that a cholesterol tablet which is for more than Rs 100, we give for Rs 10.

“The aim is to benefit people who cannot afford to buy costly medicines. But still there needs to be awareness among people who are from lower middle classes as they don’t understand that only the brand changes, and it is not that these cheaper medicines won’t help them,” the retired doctor said.

He said he did not want to sit idle after getting retired, so he opened the centre. It gives me great relief to help the needy people, he said.

“The idea is also to break the old nexus between doctors and phrma companies that asks a patient to take medicines of a particular brand. He claimed that 80-90 per cent Indian medicines gets exported, while 10 per cent of the branded medicines come here.

“So, there should not be any kind of ignorance about anything among patients. They must know that these medicines, which they are getting at much cheaper rates, work equally as the branded ones,” he said.