Union Health Ministry's ambitious schemes of providing free generic drugs at government health care centres have been launched after being put on hold for a year. The initiatives, called 'Free Drug Service' and 'Free Diagnostics Service' under the National Health Mission, are aimed at sprucing up health care facilities in the country.

The Health Ministry has written to the states to take advantage of this scheme under which they can access funds from the central government by following certain guidelines laid down by it.

The guidelines include appropriate systems for procurement, logistics, quality assurance, among others. The scheme was one of the government's keystone projects of the 12th Five Year Plan.
The free generic drugs scheme was proposed after a 2011 report of the High Level Expert Group which stated that 76 per cent of the out-of-pocket expenditure on health is on drugs.