India's pharmaceutical trade is known for its disorganized character and unprofessional practices for long. Most of the 5 lakh retail chemist shops in the country are being run by traders with no sufficient storage space, no air conditioning and with no presence of pharmacists at the counters. Although these are statutory requirements provided in the Drugs & Cosmetics Act, very few in the trade follow them. With perpetual shortage of inspection staff, drug control departments in most states do not take any timely action against such lapses. At the same time, number of pharmacies in the country is multiplying leading to severe competition and unethical practices on account of huge growth in demand for pharmaceuticals over the years. A main concern for the government has been pertaining to the delivery of drugs to patients, the primary responsibility of a retail pharmacy. For this presence and advice of a qualified pharmacist is necessary. That should mean the pharmacist should be well equipped with knowledge of community pharmacy, modern aspects of dispensing, patient counselling, biochemistry and clinical pharmacy and drug store management. But most pharmacies in the country do not have a pharmacist at the counter leading to numerous unreported dispensing errors. Organized retail chains like Medicine Shoppe, Apollo Pharmacy and few others have come up in metros and are spreading fast across the country. Their operations are far better than traditional medical shops but the number of such pharmacies is not very large.
The recent move by the Centre to introduce stringent norms to curb the practice of engaging unqualified staff at the pharmacy counters to dispense drugs should be thus welcomed. The initiative comes in the wake of members of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee attached to the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilisers, taking serious note of the issue of untrained people working as pharmacists at the retail counters. The ministry has come to a conclusion that about 90 per cent of the pharmacies in the country do not have qualified staff at the counters to dispense medicines. It has also received a number of complaints in this regard from different quarters. This is a serious matter considering the fact that the country is producing almost all the required medicines. The routine complaint of the traders for not keeping a full time qualified pharmacist at the counter is the high cost of running a trade establishment. If one has to run a business establishment, all the necessary rules and regulations have to be complied at whatever costs. There should be no compromise on this. Organised retail chains are already doing the same. What is required, therefore, is a change in the mindset of pharma trade and that should ultimately set the trend to transform the good old retail chemists shops into modern pharmacies.