News
India is facing a nationwide shortage of cisplatin and carboplatin, two first-line chemotherapy drugs used to treat lung, ovarian, cervical, testicular, and head-and-neck cancers, driven by a sharp rise in global platinum prices and supply disruptions from South Africa and West Asia. Hospitals including AIIMS Delhi and the Tata Memorial Centre have reported disrupted treatment schedules. On 7 June 2026, the Department of Pharmaceuticals approved an emergency price revision of roughly 10–50% for both drugs, to help manufacturers resume full production.
About the NPPA and Drug Price Control
- The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) fixes and regulates prices of essential medicines in India, under the Drug Price Control Order (DPCO), 2013.
- It sets ceiling prices for "scheduled" medicines listed in the National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM), and caps annual price rises for other, "non-scheduled" drugs.
- Why It Matters Here: Ceiling prices for cisplatin and carboplatin had risen only about 22% over a decade, while platinum costs rose roughly 225% — a gap the NPPA's emergency revision was meant to close.
About Cisplatin and Carboplatin
- What They Are: Platinum-based chemotherapy drugs, with carboplatin a newer, less toxic analogue of cisplatin developed for the same core use.
- How They Work: They bind to DNA inside rapidly dividing cancer cells, forming crosslinks that block replication and trigger cell death.
- Essential Medicine Status: Both are listed on India's National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM), which is why their prices fall under NPPA's ceiling-price control in the first place.