Sale of cardiac, anti-diabetic drugs shoot up

New Delhi: The changes in the medication needs of the masses due to the novel Coronavirus pandemic seems to be impacting the operation of pharmaceutical companies with those dealing in respiratory, anti-diabetic, cardiac therapies performing much better than others having anti-infective, gastro, vitamin or pain therapies in their portfolio.

The sudden change in preferred therapies by masses has just taken a sharp turn from pre-Covid period when gastric, vitamin therapies were most widely used. Probably the concern that coronavirus impacts adversely chronic heart, lung and diabetics severely had turned people into buying more of medicines for these ailments.

In the month of June, demand for Cardiac drugs registered the strongest growth of 15.9 per cent yoy in terms of value and Anti-Diabetic segment grew at 12.7 per cent yoy due to continued buying during the period of the lockdown.

Similarly, the Neuro segment (+14.6 per cent yoy) saw higher demand but surprisingly value growth for respiratory went down to 4.5 per cent even though Covid-19 is known to impact this critical functioning of the human body. Segments in acute therapies like anti infective, Gynaec/Vitamins, pain, gastro where the demand for drugs has always remained higher than others, declined year-on-year in June clearly bringing out the shift in drug use by Indians, especially during the time of lockdown.

The first quarter period (April-June) is seasonally a strong quarter for acute therapies and the demand loss is, thus, unlikely to fully recover.

According to a Emkay research report, the changing preference of drugs by people has also had an impact on the Indian pharmaceutical industry with companies having stronger drug brands dealing with respiratory, cardiac and anti-diabetic therapies (in chronic care) registering growth higher than the industry average.