The All India Organisation of Chemists and Druggists (AIOCD) is all set to declare a nation-wide pharmacy bandh on March 28, 2014 in order to press its long pending demand of empowering drug retail owners, with more than two years of experience, eligible to dispense medicines.  This according to the trade body would not affect the consistent supply of medicines in several parts of the country facing acute shortage of pharmacists.

The demand has been festering since the time the trade body launched a nation-wide bandh during May last year.

A memorandum to this effect has been submitted to the Union law ministry, Union health ministry and Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) on March 5, 2014 and is in the process of being sent to the Members of Parliament. The memorandum also mentions about two other important issues like the need for proper implementation of Schedule H1 by the physicians and lack of knowledge and infrastructure to implement online registration of narcotic drugs by the retail drug stores across the country.

The Central government in September 2013 had amended the Drugs and Cosmetics (D&C) Rules to insert Schedule H1 category to curb the indiscriminate use of antibiotics and some other vital drugs, by placing 46 antibiotics under this category. Pharmacists are of the view that a proper healthcare infrastructure should be in place to implement Schedule H1 in the true spirit of the law.

Says AIOCD general secretary Suresh Gupta, "Pharmacists are being harassed in the name of record keeping. They are being mandated to maintain a separate register for Schedule H1 drugs as it includes anti TB drug and habit forming drugs. The onus of implementing Schedule H1 lies as much with the physicians as it is with pharmacists. It defies all logic when the Act mandates only pharmacists to maintain records and not physicians considering the fact that over 65  per cent prescribers or medical practitioners are unqualified.  Practitioners of other systems of medicine like Homoeopathy, Ayurveda and Unani are also prescribing medicines when only allopathy practitioners or an MBBS doctor registered with Medical Council of India (MCI) is eligible to do that."

AIOCD recently concluded a survey and found that states like UP, Bihar, Punjab, Haryana, Orissa, Jammu Kashmir and North Eastern states are facing unavailability of pharmacists.

Another point of contention that AIOCD has raised relates to the government ordinance of making online registrations compulsory for the drug retail shops. This covers around 4,000 brands of medicines which fall under the purview of the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Rules, 1985. "Online registration of narcotic drugs is practically unfeasible as most of the pharmacists are not computer literate and our country needs an IT infrastructure in place to implement the same," laments Gupta.

AIOCD is also planning not to exercise their voting rights in the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections if the bandh fails to evoke desired response from the government on their demands.