ArticleBMC public health2025
Questions regarding medication-related issues raised by legislators in the Indian parliament, 2017-2024.
Article in BMC public health, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundLegislators' questions in parliament serve as a crucial oversight mechanism, providing insights into prevalent health problems. This study analyzes questions asked by Indian members of parliament (MPs) regarding medications, including generic medicines and drug pricing, directed to the Health and Family Welfare Ministry from January 2017 to February 2024.
methodsHealth-related questions raised by Indian MPs were extracted from the digital repository of the parliament. Medication-related questions were identified by keyword search using R statistical software (v4.1.2; R Core Team 2021) and manually confirmed. Each question/set of questions asked were converted to one sentence summaries using Microsoft Copilot (2025), and categorized into themes. Drugs, diseases, gender, and age groups addressed in each question were identified.
resultsA total of 1121 medication-related questions were asked, constituting 19.42% of all health-related questions. Themes included cancer treatment, drug regulation, general health issues, health infrastructure, infectious diseases, maternal and child health, non-communicable diseases, and vaccination. COVID-19-related questions were prominent, followed by antimicrobials and haematinics. Post-COVID years saw increased questions on cancer chemotherapy and health infrastructure. Health delivery and drug regulation questions were consistently raised.
conclusionsOur study revealed an active dialog between legislators and the health ministry to address the population's medication needs. The findings demonstrate that legislators are responsive to the changing disease patterns and challenges in treatment delivery. While our study examined medication-related questions in general, future research can focus on questions about specific drug groups or health issues to better understand the legislative influence on healthcare.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.