All India Organization of Chemists & Druggists (AIOCD), the national body representing the pharmaceutical trade in the country, has called for a nationwide bandh on October 14 in protest against the possibility of government allowing sale of medicines online. All the pharmacy outlets functioning from the government and private hospitals and nursing homes will not, however, be participating in the bandh. AIOCD has been objecting to the idea of online trading of drugs and pharmaceuticals for some time but no clear stand on this issue has come from the government side so far. In fact that has led to sales of several medicines online by some of well known e-commerce companies in the past. And Maharashtra Food & Drug Administration had taken action against one e-commerce website, Snapdeal.com, in Mumbai last May for selling some prescription medicines on line. The action was for violation of Rule 65 of Drugs & Cosmetics Act which specifies that only a licensed dealer can sell drugs to a customer on production of a doctor’s prescription. The state FDA then directed Snapdeal.com to immediately withdraw offers for sale and exhibition of prescription drugs from its e-commerce sites and delist them. The company reported to have agreed to comply with the state FDA directions. A few instances of selling prescription drugs to overseas buyers were detected by state FDA last year by a group of traders without having drug licenses or prescriptions. It has been found then that these buyers were largely from the US, Europe, Canada, Japan and some African countries.

The protest by the pharmaceutical trade is mainly against any sale of medicines online in the domestic market. Such trading also amounts to violation of the provisions of D&C Act which can ultimately hurt the patient community, according to AIOCD. It is in this context, the Centre appointed a committee under Harshdeep Kamble, commissioner of Maharashtra FDA, to explore the possibility of allowing online trading in pharmaceuticals and under what rules. The Committee had its first meeting on last September 7 and invited comments and suggestions from the stakeholders including individuals, associations, trade bodies and companies. In its submission to the Committee, AIOCD made it clear that it would not be advisable to amend D&C Act and Rules for allowing the sale of medicines through internet. Internet sale of medicines definitely help customers to pick up medicines without visiting the pharmacy outlets and the offer of 10 to 15 per cent discount on most of the medicines by the e-traders is quite tempting. A serious problem the patient community and regulatory authorities may face because of this new trading system is the routing of doubtful quality of medicines into the online. Spurious and substandard drugs are being regularly detected and confiscated from the manufacturing facilities and trading points in different parts of the country by the regulatory authorities. In a scenario like this, patients cannot afford to take such a grave risk of buying medicines online. Kamble panel has to consider this and other key issues before coming to a set of recommendations on this critical matter.