Stocking and selling of medicines by physicians, especially general practitioners, is an undesirable trend seen largely in semi urban and rural areas of the country for some years now. Of late, the practice is spreading to most of the urban centres and metros directly hitting the business of retail chemists having shops near doctors’ clinics. Well established general practitioners and most of the specialists do not, however, indulge in this unethical practice. Doctors, resorting to this practice, are found to be not keeping registers to note the batch numbers, expiry dates, prices, stock variations etc of the drugs sold to their patients. These are mandatory requirements for sales of drugs as per the Drugs & Cosmetics Act. As the doctors are permitted to dispensing of drugs to their patients, no drug inspectors can enter the premises of the doctors for inspection of records except the pharmacies attached to the hospitals. Doctors having clinics are also found to be getting supplies of some of the expensive drugs directly from some pharmaceutical companies for selling to patients. For the pharma companies, this arrangement is stated to be of great advantage as they do not have to pay the trade commissions to the wholesalers and retailers.
As per the Schedule K (5) of Drugs & Cosmetics Act, doctors are allowed to stock and sell limited number of medicines to their own patients. At the time of framing the Act in 1945, this provision was included in the Act only because there were not many medical stores in the country. The number of retail pharmacies subsequently increased to nearly seven lakhs now in the country and the number is growing every month. Although the doctors are allowed to stock and sell medicines to their patients on certain conditions, what is happening now is open flouting of these provisions by several ways. First of all, sale of medicines cannot be made without possessing a valid drug license issued by the state licensing authority. Then, dispensing of drugs in these clinics are being done by unqualified persons and not by the pharmacists. The retail chemists have reason to be concerned about this growing trend as their sales are already under pressure because of the growing competition amongst the traders. An amendment to the Drugs & Cosmetics Act is probably necessary to curb this unethical activity before it develops into a much bigger issue.