Telugu turns pills pilfer-proof

Hyderabad: Telangana government’s direction to the pharmaceutical companies, which supply drugs to the government hospitals in the state, to print the names of medicines in Telugu on the bottles and strips of tablets has come as a blessing in disguise. It curbs diversion of medicines meant for the government hospitals into the open market.

According to sources in the Telangana State Medical Infrastructure Development Corporation (TSMIDC), a provision has been made in the tender terms for supplying medicines by the pharmaceutical companies to print the names of medicines in Telugu on the cartons and on the material used for packing medicines.

The provision was introduced mainly following a complaint from patients who are given the free medicines at primary and community health centers in rural areas and quasi-urban centers. Since the names of medicines were in English, they could not take medicines as prescribed by the doctors at different timings in the day.  

The villagers have devised their own method of making small, medium and big holes to the strips of tablets or capsules given to them at the PHCs and CHCs. Depending on the size of holes made, they used to identify a medicine need to be taken at different timings of the day.

To end this constraint, it was decided to include a provision to make it mandatory to print the name of the medicines in Telugu. Since people could read Telugu, it would be easy for them to distinguish one name from the other and the timings in which they should take them. 

At the same time, it is also helping the government in quite a different way. Speaking to The Hans India, the official said, earlier, there were several complaints from across the state alleging that the drugs supplied to the government-run hospitals are diverted to the private medical shops. 

In turn, the patients were asked to go and purchase the medicines prescribed by the doctors citing lack of stocks in the PHCs, CHCs and other urban dispensaries. The medical shops sell the same drugs diverted to their shops and give a huge cut to 
the hospital staff engaged in such irregularities.

Further, medicines distributed by the government-run hospitals had a line printed on them that they were meant for the distribution of government hospitals and not for sale. However, as they were in small print and that too in English people never bothered to know what it is all about. 

But, now along with printing the names of medicines in Telugu, the companies were also asked to increase the size of strips of tablets and capsules. Following this, now, it became difficult to sell the medicines supplied to the government hospitals as now people would know that the medicines being sold in private medical shops were actually meant to be supplied to the patients in the government hospitals.