After making separate shelves for displaying generic drugs mandatory at pharmacies, the Central government is planning to introduce color-coding and symbols to identify generic medicines and promote their consumption. The identification mechanism, similar to the one used to differentiate food products of vegetarian and non-vegetarian origin, is weighed by the Drug Consultative Committee and a meeting is expected to be convened soon to seek views of industry stakeholders. Of late, the government has been adopting a slew of measures to push generic medicine use.
The steps include the provision of keeping a separate shelf for generic medicines in every pharmacy and directing drug companies to print generic names in a font which is two font sizes larger than the brand name . Though the labelling requirement is on a voluntary basis until the end of next month, it will be mandatory…
