Ozone Pharma offers Rs2-a-day cure for hypertension, diabetes and high cholesterol

Ozone Pharmaceuticals Ltd, a New-Delhi-based pharmaceutical company, has come out with a ''uniform pricing strategy'', under which the company will provide a set of seven medicines of various dosages at Rs2 per day to poor patients suffering from chronic diseases such as high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol.

The uniform pricing strategy will ensure availability of affordable medicines for lifetime complications such as diabetics, hypertension etc, A K Sahoo, chief executive of the company, said. ''It is the first such move by any company in the world,'' he added.

The move is in accord with an initiative by the Rajasthan Government to make available generic medicines at cheaper rates to patients, he said.

Ozone Pharma plans to contact doctors across the country and persuade them to prescribe to their poor patients Ozone's cheaper generic medicines that are also of the best quality.

India has 51 million diabetic patients as of now and their numbers are growing at an alarming pace. This number could swell to 87 million by 2030, making it the diabetes capital of the world. These chronic diseases account for 53 per cent of all deaths in the country each year.

Ten per cent of diabetics take no medicines as these are unaffordable, while 39 million Indians are pushed into poverty each year as they are forced to take expensive ones, Sahoo said.

Indian offers a Rs65,000-crore market for drugs to cure these diseases. Medicines to cure diabetes and cardiovascular diseases account for about 8 per cent each of this market.

Ozone Pharma plans to reach at least 25 per cent of diabetes patients in India in the next two years.