A racket involving some prominent multinational companies bypassing the wholesalers and retail chemists and selling drugs directly to the physicians and patients by using the medical representatives in cities like Mumbai and Pune has been detected.

Informed sources said that these companies identify reputed physicians treating lifestyle diseases and collect data of patients spending heavily on medicines for these diseases. Medical representatives of the companies then contact these high spending patients and supply medicines directly to them.

Aggrieved over the growing nexus between physicians and pharma companies, chemists based in Mumbai and Pune have approached the state government and the Food and Drug Administration for redressal. The chemist associations have found that these MNCs are selling medicines to the patients with heavy discounts. This unethical practice of the pharma companies is causing big losses to the chemists.

Based on the findings by the city based chemists over the past several months, it has been reported to the State FDA Minister Satej Bunty Patil and FDA Commissioner Mahesh Zagade that companies have allegedly supplied medicines of diabetes and cardiac disorders directly to the patients at heavy discounted rates of more than 10 per cent.

City based chemists have carried 5 such operations in Mumbai and Pune to detect such malpractices and found that pharma companies have colluded with physicians to supply medicines having MRP of Rs.500 to consumers. In one such case, medicine stock worth of Rs.20, 000 was found in a clinic.

Argues a chemist,"We are the most vulnerable targets when it comes to implementing regulations like Schedule H1 and dispensing prescription drugs. The retail chemists have to bear the brunt of doing the business in a regulated manner, it doesn't matter whether the doctor is supposed to follow the model prescription format issued by the state government recently."

At a time when wholesalers of drugs are using all sorts of pressure tactics to make the state government and the administrative machinery to toe their line, a sizable chunk of chemists across the state, including Pune, are agitated because of this trend.

In a recent representation to the state government, chemists have informed that medicines are supplied to the doctors by pharma companies in bulk in violation of the law of the land. They have advocated the need to have uniform policy on enforcing regulations on physicians and pharmacists.