Perception of rural and urban population on generic and branded drugs

Abstract

Generic medicines are identical/ clone to an innovator or product brand name. After expiration of patent terms of the innovator product, other pharmaceutical companies usually apply to the drug regulatory bodies for approval to market the generic versions of the innovator's drugs. Generic drugs in the market were sold under the non-proprietary name or brand name. Drugs and medicines form a significant portion of out of pocket (OOP) expenses in Indian households. In order to resolve this issue, Government of India launched Jan Aushadhi Scheme (JAS) to provide inexpensive generic drugs to the patients. A separate interview was conducted for the illiterate people and Google forms were forwarded through whatsapp for literates, both contain the same questions to exclude the bias. The collected data was analysed and converted to graphs/ pie charts and the collected data was documented. Our study concludes that by using the questionnaire, the total patients (n= 500) were interviewed, different ages of people were included(15 to above 50).15-30 age group 29.2%, 31-49 age group 39.8%, above 50 age group 31% were involved. Male 60.4%, Female 39.4%, literate 47.4%, illiterate 52.6%, rural 49%, urban 51% were involved. A standard survey form/data collection sheet for both rural and urban population was used. Both literates and illiterates in rural and urban population almost 49% preferred branded drugs due to brand trust, quality, efficacy, and nearly 38% purchase medications based on the availability and remaining 13% preferred generic due to various reasons like cost effectiveness, same as branded quality and effectiveness.