Essential medicines: Cipla, Pfizer, Sun Pharma & other majors hit most by price cut

The health ministry's recent move to revise the National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM) by adding 106 medicines and deleting 70, thereby taking the total number now to 376 drugs, is expected to hit several pharma companies.

According to an analysis put out by the pharmaceutical market research entity AIOCD AWACS on Wednesday, the most likely to be impacted would be Cipla, Pfizer and Sun Pharma.

Giving details of the impact on the companies following the price cuts, it puts the value loss for Cipla at Rs 84 crore, for Pfizer, Rs 56 crore and Rs 42 crore for Sun Pharma.

This is followed by companies such as Zydus, Lupin, Sanofi and others.

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In terms of therapy areas, the impact, it says, is expected to be mostly felt in anti-infectives, followed by cardiac, neuro /CNS and respiratory segments. It puts the overall patient benefit at Rs 747 crore.