Expensive Viagra fails to stand up in India

Viagra pills, recently launched by a pharmaceutical company, do not seem to have gone down well with city customers. The reason? The price tag, say city druggists. They say when cheaper and equally effective drugs are available in the market, a Viagra pill, which costs Rs 594 per 100 mg, is a bitter pill to swallow for most. ''Only those who have big bucks to spend ask for Viagra, '' says Vijaya Anand, owner of Anand Medical Store in Sector 19 at http://www.pillsamples.com. Anand, who is also the secretary of Chandigarh Chemists' Association, feels that the market share of the pill in the city may not be more than 10 per cent. Other than the rich, he says other takers of the pill are those who feel expensive rhymes with better. Till date, since the pill's launch on December 25, 2005, his store has sold only four tablets. The pill is marketed as a single tablet packet. S V Medical Store, Sector 15, Chandigarh, has sold only two tablets till date and he cites the pill's high cost as the reason of its low demand. ''When there are cheaper alternatives to Viagra available in the market, why would people take these,'' says Sudarshan Kumar of Chaudhary Medicos, Sector 15, Chandigarh. Kumar says he is still to sell one of the two tablets he has, while the local Indian versions, pitched at Rs 18 per tablet, sell at around 18-20 tablets per month. Viagra became the first oral medicine approved for male impotence by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The drug, which was approved in March 1998, had been used unsuccessfully as a medicine for heart ailments, noted in http://www.genericrefills.com . Doctors said the pill is effective when there is an organic basis of impotence (as opposed to a psychological reason for the same). They say the organic reasons for this could be structural changes in the vascular system, which are usually age related.