With pharma stores and medical shops in the country not caring to note the date of prescription for medicines by the doctors sell the same drugs repeatedly to the patients leading to misuse of medicines by patients. Such indiscriminate intake of antibiotics, steroids, painkillers and also common drugs by the patients make them resistant to many drugs in the long run.

To avoid such situations of repeated use of same drugs by the patients, the doctors are now started printing the validity date for their prescribed drugs. “Mentioning a validity date for prescriptions given by a doctor is mainly to check misuse of prescribed drugs and avoid repeated use of same drug for a longer period without the consent of the doctor. Every drug has its own course and it should be used to a certain period only. If it is used for extended period it many lead to many other complications,” opined a senior doctor from KIMS.

In many of the cases, it is observed that, a patient who visits a doctor for an ailment for the first time and gets a prescription by the doctor and the patient tend to use the same prescription again and again to get the medicines without consulting the doctor. Because of this, there is a possibility of excess use of antibiotics and habit forming drugs which will lead to greater damage to the health. Particularly, the unprescribed use of antibiotics will lead to drug resistant bugs. If once contracted with a drug resistant bug the patient may become vulnerable to various diseases. “Excess use of antibiotics will lead to development of drug resistance bugs in the body. Once attacked with this kind of bugs, there will be no cure to it as any kind of drug will have any effect to cure such a disorder,” informed a senior doctor from NIMS.

The time-barred prescriptions are mainly meant for antibiotics, steroids, pain killers and other common medicines whose abuse is rampant. For patients who require taking medicines in the long term for hypertension, diabetes, thyroid and kidney diseases, the doctors’ prescription could last for up to two months, when the patients are called for reviews.

Yogananda, deputy drug controller of Telangana  said, “Every pharmacist must dispense the medicines only using proper prescription by the doctors. They should also check the prescription date and should verify it with the doctor if possible. They are also required to photostat copy of the same with them (particularly of Schedule H drugs). In fact, rules do not permit the chemists to fill the same prescription repeatedly. To cross check such violations we regularly conduct raids. But of late there is a growing sales of OTC medicines and the chemists are selling the medicines without even having the prescriptions, this has become a big challenge to track such incidents.”

Of late, some doctors have begun printing a 15-day validity period on their prescriptions to prevent patients from using them repeatedly to obtain medicines. This, doctors said, was a scientific method to curb misuse of medicines. “The side-effects of any drugs are known within two to three days. This gives the patient enough time to come back and get further evaluated. When they come back on that prescription there is a free consultation offered. But most patients are not aware of this,” explains Dr V. Jaipal, a paediatrician.