All the 60 products of the Novartis will not be available in the pharmaceutical market of Mumbai and Thane regions as the Pharmaceutical Wholesalers Association (PWA) and the Retail Dispensing Chemists and Druggists Association (RDCA) have started boycotting the company's products in protest against its unethical trade practices.

RDCA and PWA joint coordination committee president, Dilip Mehta, said that Novartis has been resorting to the unethical trade practice of selling some of their products directly to the consumers. Most of these products are high cost patented drugs. Though the associations had taken up the issue with the company several times in the past to take remedial measures, it all fell on the deaf ears of the company. As a last resort, the wholesalers and the retailers associations have decided to boycott all the 60 products of Novartis from April 1. Mehta said that the boycott may be extended to other regions of the state after some time.

Mehta said that apart from business losses, the traders have been losing credibility due to the Novartis' act of selling some of their products directly to the consumers. Whenever the association took up the issue with the company, the company officials promised that these medicines would also be routed through traders after some time. But, these promises so far proved to be a false assurance, Mehta said.

Meanwhile, the associations have once again written a letter to Novartis management asking to reimburse last five years losses suffered by the traders and also to provide details of the products selling directly by the company.