The Pharmacy Council of India (PCI) should consider it as its responsibility to initiate actions against unethical practices like renting out registered certificates for retail drug sales by professional pharmacists working in industry and research organisations.

Many of the pharmacy graduates working in industry and in other organisations are renting out their certificates to medical shop owners for retail business. PCI should take up this issue seriously and find a way out for addressing this unethical and illegal action, said Rajendra Singh Bapna, manager of pharmacy division of the Bombay Hospital in Indore.

An active member of the Indian Hospital Pharmacist Association (IHPA), Bapna, while speaking to Pharmabiz at the MP IPA Conclave and Pharma Tech Expo in Indore last week, said, this kind of misconduct from the side of professional pharmacists occurs because of lack of provisions in the Pharmacy Act or in the practice regulations that all the graduates in pharmacy should get registered with pharmacy council similar to that of the registrations by doctors with medical council.

As far as pharmacy qualification is concerned, only those graduates going for drug business, either wholesale or retail, need to have registration with the council. Graduates who are opting for industry profession need not to have that registration. Here, the PCI should make it mandatory that all the graduates should register their certificates with their respective councils as soon as they qualify the exam.

The council should give the registered candidate one roll number which should be recorded in the list of registered pharmacists and the details of which should be made available online. Such pharmacists when get appointed in an organisation, his employer should furnish the details of appointment with the roll number of certificate registration with the respective pharmacy council and to the drugs control department of the state where the organisation belongs to. Here, the employer becomes the custodian of the registered certificates of his staffs. In that case, no other person can use his certificate for applying for licence for drug sale. When the application for licence is verified by the licensing authority, the registration/roll number will display his employment details. Then, the SLA can reject the application and recommend for penal action against the pharmacist with the pharmacy council, said Bapna.

He said, working in industry and earning money through unethical ways of renting out certificates for business is shunning the chances of jobs of other qualified and unemployed pharmacists.

When asked about the increasing number of pharmacy graduates in the country, he said each state government should create more posts of pharmacist as well as drug inspector in the service sector. There should be a ratio of drug inspector and number of pharmacies. It can be one inspector for two hundred pharmacies (1:200). If government raises the number of posts, it will not only increase employment opportunities, but also strengthen the enforcement of the Act. One drug inspector should be made for inspection of 200 pharmacies.

Bapna said, in Madhya Pradesh in particular and other states in north India in general, several pharmacy colleges are not having the PCI approval. Students coming out of these colleges are unable to register their certificates with the state pharmacy councils. Without registration of certificates, the qualified pharmacists cannot open a retail medical shop. Whereas, universities in these states give affiliations to those colleges and permit them conduct various courses. According to him, the PCI should instruct such universities for not giving affiliations to those colleges which have no PCI approvals.

According to Bapna, a burning issue in the pharmacy education sector in MP is that many colleges do not make the required infrastructure facilities within the stipulated time for getting approval from PCI.

Regarding hospital pharmacies, he said, in his state, only corporate hospitals have pharmacies. Also, the pharmacists working in hospitals and community pharmacies are earning only very less as salary.