Jan Aushadhi Kendra, AMRIT pharmacy face drug shortage

Parveen Arora

Tribune News Service

Karnal, November 7

Patients at the Kalpana Chawla Government Medical College (KCGMC) are not getting full benefits of the much-publicised projects -Jan Aushadhi Kendra (JAK) and AMRIT pharmacy, situated inside the KCGMC, due to inadequacy of medicines. 

Both the projects of the Union Government are aimed at providing cheaper medicines to people. JAK is to provide quality medicines at affordable prices to people, while unlike JAK, the Affordable Medicines and Reliable Implants for Treatment (AMRIT) pharmacy store do not sell generic versions of drug but sell branded drugs and implants at cheaper rates.

Most of the generic medicines, used in routine, are not available at the JAK. The same situation is at AMRIT pharmacy, known as 24x7 kendra where several branded medicines were out of stock.

To check the ground reality after several complaints related to shortage of medicines, when The Tribune team visited both the centrs, it found that medicines including amlodipine, which is used for BP patients, B-complex, pantoprazole, calcium carbonate, pregabalin, tramadol with PCM combination and others were not available at JAK. The AMRIT pharmacy does not have skin disease lotion, cetrizine syrup for kids, augmentin regular syrup and others. 

The location of both the centres is not convenient to the patients, due to which most of the patiensts are not familiar about the location of these pharmacies. They demanded more publicity and better location of these stores. “The locations of both the centres should be at the gate of the KCGMC, so that maximum people can avail the benefits of cheaper medicines. Presently, due to unawareness and less publicity, patients have to purchase some medicines from private stores which is costly affair for them,” said Surinder Kumar, a patient.

The location of the stores should be accessible not only for the patients of the KCGMC, but also of the other residents of Karnal area, another patient said.

Ranbir, centre in charge of AMRIT, said due to location they were earlier receiving less response, but now the patients were coming here. He said that the local brands were not available with them, while they have most of the medicines which were in demand in the hospital. He admitted the shortage of cetrizine syrup and augmentin syrup.

Out of stock

Most of the generic medicines, used in routine, are not available at the JAK. The same situation is at AMRIT pharmacy, known as 24x7 kendra where several branded medicines were out of stock