Pharma education in India now has a bigger responsibility to respond to keep pace with the advances in pharmaceutical sciences and industry demands
Dr Manasvi M Kamat
Pharma education in India is currently facing a strange dichotomy. The seats available for pharma education are increasing, at the same time when many seats remain vacant. On one hand, while new job opportunities beckon pharma graduates, the AICTE and Pharmacy Council of India (PCI) have agreed for a conditional ban in setting up of new pharmacy institutes till the year 2022.
The AICTE data indicates that there has been an increase in the number of pharmacy colleges in the country from 1425 in 2012-13 to 2694 in 2019-20, and around 72 per cent increase in seats from 1.61 lakh seats on offer in 2012-13 to 2.77 lakh for the academic year 2019-20. On the other hand, various news reports indicate that the ensuing glut has seen over 50,000 seats going vacant annually.
The figures released by the Maharashtra State CET Cell, for instance, show that out of the 22,500 total seats in pharmacy institutes across the State this year, 18 per cent (3947 seats) went vacant which included 1541 seats under the EWS quota alone. During the last year, only 2.11 per cent seats (363) out of 17,188 had gone vacant.
The decision to impose a moratorium by AICTE and the PCI was triggered primarily due to the unprecedented number of applications received for starting new pharmacy programmes during the academic session 2019-20. The authorities with a view not to allow poor quality candidates to take up pharma education granted approvals to only 842 among the 1400 applications that were received in 2019-20 to start new pharma colleges with a maximum of 541 institutions in Uttar Pradesh. The ban, however, is not made applicable to the North East and States where the number of pharmacy institutions is less than 50.
The conditional ban is assumed to avoid the lopsided growth of the institutions and the manpower availability vis-à-vis job opportunities, leading to planned growth in the states where such education and opportunities are required. The authorities probably feel that the existing institutes are enough to produce the required number of graduates to cater to demands of the pharma industry and our healthcare needs. In the last couple of years, several technical institutes and nursing colleges saw a dip in the admissions. This dip led to a new surge as the buildings of these institutes were used to start pharmacy colleges.
The other challenging issue before pharma education is about plugging the employability demand-supply gap in a scenario where the pharma industry growing by leaps and bounds. Pharma education in the country now has a bigger responsibility to respond to keep pace with the advances in pharmaceutical sciences and changes the industry demands.
India currently ranks third in manufacturing of drugs in the world. Around 40 per cent of generic drugs used in US and 20 per cent of drugs used in the UK are being exported by India. With around 40 per cent of the world’s share in pharmacy/drug market and one in every three vaccines manufactured in India, our pharma industry contributes to nearly 12 to 15 per cent of India’s economy. Around 33 billion dollars worth of drugs is being manufactured domestically with 17 billion dollars worth exported in 2018-19. The target is to reach 65 billion-dollar mark in 2019-20 and $120-130 billion
by 2030.
The magnitude of the growth potential hint at huge employment opportunities in R&D labs, manufacturing, and logistics segments will offer. The ambitious plans of many Gulf countries like Oman, Saudi, Egypt and Kuwait, to be pharma manufacturing hubs will also create huge demand for our graduates. The government’s ‘Jan Aushadhi Paruyojana’ under which the central government sells medicines at cheaper rates has opened up new opportunities as well. The number of stores under the above scheme has gone up from 99 in 2014 to around 5,000 now. Apart from the mandatory requirement of hiring one pharmacist at every Jan Aushadhi outlet, pharmacists need to be involved in storage and logistics of the medicines. This means there are approximately 6,000 new pharma jobs that just one new scheme has created.
There is huge scope for employment in the field of pharmacy with the governments being proactive in encouraging start-ups and by opening several centres for providing skill training. The pharma educators should also be ready for a change. Replacing the requirement of thesis/project submissions with an appropriate internship in industrial research will prove to be meaningful. The course contents could also be made research-based and skill-oriented. In fact, many pharma colleges could be established pharma-skill and research institutions on the lines of the ‘Delhi Pharma Sciences and Research University’ (DPSRU), established as the first-of-its-kind pharmaceutical research university in the country launched by the Delhi government in 2015.
The very fact that India is placed fifth from the bottom in the pharma research sector and the recent news that three major Indian drug makers received warning letters from the US health care watchdog and Indian FDA in the last two months, highlights that our drug sector is still plagued by quality issues and lax documentation amidst rising global concern over tainted drug supplies. The proper implementation of the Pharmacy Practice Rules and Regulations 2015 in the country would enhance employment opportunities for pharmacists in private as well as in government sectors, while the coordinated opposition to the Drugs and Cosmetics (10th Amendment) Rules, 2017, that allows nurses, Asha and Anganwadi workers to prescribe drugs besides pharmacists, could protect many jobs for the pharma graduates.
To remain relevant in the dynamic scenario, pharma education has to evolve with times. Instead of imposing bans on the commencement of new institutions the market forces may be allowed to decide the future course of education. It would make more sense if the AICTE and the PCI reinvents; whether the content desired by the industry is being taught what is taught, and the way in which it is taught. Unless we integrate skill development programmes into the pharma curriculum the discussions to increase the employability of pharma graduates will remain as mere discussions.
