Kathmandu, July 7 -- based Paropakar Maternity and Women's Hospital has been running a fair-price pharmacy for years, through which the hospital administration has been selling medicines at discounted prices. Patients seeking treatment at the hospital, as well as others buying medicine from its pharmacy, receive an average discount of around 40 percent.

Like Thapathali Hospital, many state-run hospitals, including Bir Hospital, National Trauma Centre, Kanti Children's Hospital, Manmohan Cardiothoracic Vascular and Transplant Center, Shahid Gangalal National Heart Centre, have long operated their own pharmacies where medicines are sold at discounted prices under policies introduced by successive governments.

Now, as Minister for Health a...