Shortages of essential medicines in Government hospitals and Jan Aushadhi Kendras

As per information provided by Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoH&FW), to ensure availability of essential drugs and reduce the Out-of-Pocket Expenditure (OOPE) of the patients visiting the public health facilities, Government has rolled out the Free Drugs Service Initiative (FDSI) under National Health Mission (NHM). Under this, financial support is provided to States / Union Territories for provision of free essential medicines in public health facilities based on the requirements posed by them in their Programme Implementation Plans (PIPs) within their overall resource envelope.

MoH&FW has recommended facility wise Essential Medicines List (EML) to be made available at the public healthcare facilities:

Sub Health Centre Ayushman Arogya Mandir (SHC-AAMs) – 113
Primary Health Centre Ayushman Arogya Mandirs (PHC-AAMs) – 179
Community Health Centers (CHCs) – 301
Sub-District Hospital – 318
District Hospital (DHs) – 381
Support under the scheme is available for procurement of drugs and strengthening /setting up robust systems of procurement, Quality Assurance, supply chain management and warehousing, prescription audit, grievance redressal, dissemination of Standard Treatment guidelines and establishment of IT enabled platform DVDMS (Drugs & Vaccine Distribution Management System) for monitoring the real status of procurement and availability of essential medicines. To facilitate the monitoring of supply chain management activity at National level, a Central Dashboard has been developed.

This information was given by Minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilizers, Smt. Anupriya Patel, in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha today.(updated on 11th August 2026)