National List of Essential Medicines of India - Central Drugs ...

Salient features of NLEM 2011:
The medicines have been categorized according to therapeutic area. Therefore it
is possible that a medicine with more than one indication appears in more than
one category.
The issue of mentioning the strength of the medicine dose was deliberated. The
committee took the considered view that the strength should be mentioned in
the NLEM.
For essentiality of requirement the medicines have been categorized as follows:
- P, S and T denote essentiality at Primary, Secondary and Tertiary levels
respectively while P, S, T (U in NLEM 2003) indicates essentiality at all the
levels.
A total of 348 medicines (excluding repetitions) are present in NLEM 2011. In the
NLEM 2011, 181 medicines fall under the category of P, S and T, 106 medicines
fall under the category of S, T while 61 medicines are categorized as T only. In
comparison to NLEM 2003, number of medicines deleted is 47 and 43 medicines
have been added.
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