DoP to be renamed as Department of Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices

NEW DELHI: Government is planning to rechristen the Department of Pharmaceuticals and add medical devices to it in order to promote the industry, Parliament was informed today.

A task force headed by Secretary, DoP, has recommended strengthening the department and changing its name as the 'Department of Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices'.

"The task force for promoting domestic medical device industry has recommended that DoP be strengthened and rechristened as DoP and Medical Devices," Minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilisers Hansraj Gangaram Ahir said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.

"Necessary revisions in the scope of services along with creation of a separate post of director in the department to deal with issues related to the medical devices sector has been recommended," he added.

Aiming to bring prices of medical devices under a regulatory framework, the government is looking at preparing a national list of essential medical devices and empowering the national drug pricing regulator NPPA for fixing and monitoring of prices of such equipment.

The government is also planning to take several steps such as setting up parks for medical devices for promoting manufacturing in the country.

In a separate reply, the minister said the pharmaceutical industry in the country grew by 12.16 per cent in 2013-14.

As per the industry outlook of economic intelligence service of centre for monitoring of India Economy, the growth of pharma industry in India in 2012-13 stood at 9.94 per cent while in 2011-12 the industry grew by 15.93 per cent, he added.