Pharma industry sale growth rate doubles: reason to rejoice or matter of concern?

While for pharma  industry, news is  a matter  to rejoice, but for common man and doctors, there may be something  to worry or concern. The  advancements in medical science & knowledge should lead to  prevention of diseases ,  the use of medicines need to decline. With more mechanisms for diseases are discovered,  should lead to lesser occurrence of  diseases (preventive). There can be good reasons for pharmaceutical growth like more people using the medical systems and thereby  consumption of medicine has increased, that can be a simple argument to support the growth. There can be scientific and pharmaceutical  advancements, leading to healthy growth.

But there can be complex and thought provoking counter arguments, like more number of  people suffering from  diseases. There can be system failures  and inability  to prevent diseases resulting in  more people falling sick and forced to take more medicines. If  diseases like cardiac  , respiratory and cancer are on the rise ,  a common man should be worried about life style, stress  and our environment. What if infections are on the rise leading to more consumption of antibiotics?  There can be chances that antibiotics are overused and misused. There can be other uncomfortable thoughts in few minds, which worry all the patients and many among medical fraternity. These are like overuse of medicines by  doctors or even unauthorized physicians.  There  can be possibility of people indulging in   crosspathy or aggressive marketing by pharma companies.

The domestic pharma retail market registered a robust growth rate of around 10% in 2018, nearly doubling year-on-year, buoyed by higher volumes and launch of new drugs. In 2017, the market was impacted by the introduction of GST, resulting in a meagre growth rate of 5.5% – the lowest in recent years. Anti-diabetics, cardio-vascular, respiratory and derma medicines ended the year with strong double-digit growth, while overall drivers of the Rs 1.29-lakh-crore market include higher volumes (4.8%), price increase (2.2%) and new launches (2.4%), data from market research firm AIOCD-Awacs said. For December alone, the market showed 9.8% growth, higher than in November.  In fact, growth has been consistently above 9% over the last four quarters.Expansion was driven by top domestic companies mainly by  Anti-diabetic therapy, Ayurvedic hepatic protector Liv 52,  Anti-infectives ,  cardiac, gastro-intestinal.

Be it any reason for pharmaceutical growth, people need to know about reasons for rocket trajectory growth of pharma companies . It indirectly  depicts the health of the people and unfortunately inversely proportional to it. So there may be  more matter to worry than rejoice.