National List of Essential Medicines

September 14, 2022

Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya recently released the revised National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM) 2022.

Key facts

The revised National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM) 2022 has deleted 26 drugs, which include common gastrointestinal medicines ranitidine and sucralfate.
384 drugs are currently part of the National List of Essential Medicines 2022, with the addition of 34 drugs.
The medicines have been categorized into 27 therapeutic categories.
Drugs in the list are deleted from the list if medicines with better efficacy or favourable safety profile and better cost-effectiveness are available as their alternative.
If a specific disease is no longer a national burden, medicine for that disease would be deleted from this list.
If anti-microbial drugs become ineffective due to high resistance, they are also deleted from the list.
Concerns regarding safety profiles of the drugs and those that are banned in India are also deleted.
Four drugs that are still under patent have been included in the list. These are bedaquiline and delamind used in the treatment of multiple drug-resistant tuberculosis, dolutegravir used for treating human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, and daclatasvir used in treating viral infections such as Hepatitis C.
Several anti-cancer drugs have been included in the list to make them affordable and reduce out-of-pocket expenditure in cancer treatment.
Cardiovascular medicines dabigatran and tenecteplase are also included in this list.
The diabetes section has been expended by including teneligliptin and insulin glargine.

National List of Essential Medicines

The National List of Essential Medicines was compiled for the first time in 1996. It was revised thrice since in 2003, 2011 and 2015. The drugs in the NLEM are included in the Schedule category and their price is regulated by the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority.

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