In its efforts to bring the pharmaceutical companies under the ambit of a law in making them punishable for rolling out freebies to the doctors for promoting their medicines, the Medical Council of India (MCI) will further intensify its demand for amending the Drugs and Cosmetics Act which it had already raised with the Union Health Ministry.

If there is no prompt action from the ministry in this regard, the MCI will soon meet union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad to press the matter further, MCI sources said and added that so long as the pharma companies are not brought under the ambit of a law, the fight against the nagging issue of bribing doctors cannot succeed. The feeling in the MCI is that like accepting a gift, giving a gift is also equally wrong. At present, the MCI cannot take any action against the pharma companies for giving gifts to the doctors.

Though the MCI had recently issued a notification under which the doctors who accept any kind of gifts from pharma companies will invite cancellation of their registration to practice, the MCI cannot make any move against the companies who give the gifts to the doctors. A good number of pharma companies very often extend several kinds of gifts to the doctors including domestic and foreign holiday packages to promote their products.

The MCI is especially angered and concerned over the response (or rather lack of it) of some of the pharma companies from whom the MCI had sought details about the doctors who had recently attended some functions in Turkey and Hyderabad, reportedly sponsored by pharma companies which is against the recently amended norms of the MCI. In spite of repeated reminders, the companies refused to respond to the MCI letters in which the MCI had asked the companies to provide all details like the names of doctors and their registration number etc to take action against the erring doctors.

When all its efforts to get details about the doctors who attended the conferences in Turkey and Hyderabad failed, the MCI sought the help of Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) to pressurise the companies to provide details of the doctors to the MCI regarding these companies' alleged favours to the doctors.

But, in utter disregard to the requests of the MCI and the DCGI, these companies have not so far cared to provide the required details about the doctors.