The National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM) is a curated list of 384 medications compiled by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on the lines of the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines which contains 523 medicines.
The NLEM list has drugs that satisfy the critical healthcare needs of India’s population based on safety, efficacy, and cost-effectiveness. These medicines are generally dispensed free of cost by government hospitals.
The Government uses the NLEM to instruct the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) to enforce a strict price ceiling on them.
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