Dr. R.K.Mani

Dear friends, as promised, the citizens funded generics vs. branded drugs project is now published after 4 months in peer review. It was hardwork, but worth the effort because all of you helped us realize this important work. You can read the full detaild paper here: frontiersin.org/journals/pha… Here is a simplified summary: Do cheaper generic medicines work as well as expensive branded ones? It's a question that worries patients and even many doctors, who often quietly assume that a low price must mean lower quality. This doubt has real consequences in India, where medicines make up nearly two-thirds of what families spend out of their own pockets on healthcare — a burden that pushes millions into poverty and forces people to split doses or stop treatment altogether. To put the question to a fair, independent test, our team at the Mission for Ethics and Science in Healthcare (MESH) carried out a fully citizen-funded study, paid for entirely by donations from ordinary members of the public, with no money or influence from any drug company. We bought 131 samples of 22 commonly used medicines — covering heart disease, diabetes, infections, pain, acidity, and more — from seven different kinds of outlets across Kerala, including government stores like Jan Aushadhi, private generic chains, and premium branded pharmacies. Every sample was then coded, blinded, and sent to a top accredited laboratory for rigorous testing against the Indian Pharmacopoeia 2022 standards. What makes this study unusual is that very few before it have tested branded and generic versions from the same market side by side, included government-supplied medicines, and combined strict quality testing with a hard look at price — all at the same time. The result was striking in its simplicity: every single one of the 131 medicines passed every quality test. 100%. It made no difference whether a pill was generic or branded, cheap or expensive — they were all equally good in their active ingredient content, their purity, and how they dissolve in the body. Yet the prices told a completely different story. Generic medicines were, on average, 48.6% cheaper than their branded twins, and the most expensive brand cost up to 13.9 times more than the cheapest generic of the very same drug. Government Jan Aushadhi stores were the cheapest source for 18 of the 22 medicines tested, with potential savings running into thousands of rupees a year per medicine — for instance, over ₹16,000 a year on a single liver drug. For doctors, this is reassuring, hard evidence that prescribing a quality-assured generic is not a compromise on care; it is the same medicine at a fraction of the cost. For patients, it means you can stay on your treatment without it draining your savings, which is exactly what keeps people healthier over the long run. And this is precisely why independent, publicly funded projects like this matter so much for the future of healthcare in India: they answer the questions ordinary people actually have, free from commercial pressure, and they build the trust that programmes like Jan Aushadhi need to truly succeed. Affordable and high-quality are not opposites — in a well-regulated market, they go hand in hand. More here: frontiersin.org/journals/pha…