LAHORE, June 19: The Pakistan Chemists Retailers Association urged the government on Wednesday to take note of the unchecked sales of smuggled drugs and physicians’ samples at unlicensed medical stores operating in doctors’ clinics and hospitals.
Speaking at a press conference at the Lahore Press Club here Association’s chairman Ishaq Meo, vice-chairman Haji Liaqat Ali and Lahore district president Syed Shaukat Ali said the doctors were misusing the concession to the registered medical practitioners in Punjab Drug Rules, 1988, to dispense emergency drugs to their patients. Some of them, they said, had rented out the stores for additional income.
They said that the doctors running stores in their clinics and hospitals had assumed the role of chemists and pharmacists and were selling costly medicines to their patients without proper warrantee through third party marketing because drug inspectors were not allowed to check their stocks under the provisions of Drug Rules, 1976. They said they were aware of instances where a pack of Zecid tablets, costing Rs17, was sold to the patient for Rs120, a pack of Zefim tablets, priced at Rs18, passed for Rs65 and Cide tablets, priced at Rs13, were sold for Rs30. Food supplements priced at Rs25 were being sold from Rs150 to Rs175.
The PCRA office-bearers said the pharmaceutical companies had induced the doctors to open medical stores and clinics in their clinics and hospitals for marketing their costly medicines. The companies, they alleged, were also bribing senior doctors and professors by sponsoring seminars in five-star hotels and offering free foreign trips. Should the trend not be checked immediately, they feared, the doctor’s role would degenerate into a that of medical salesman.
They said medical representatives’ entry in government hospitals should be banned and pharmaceutical companies should be directed to send their literature by post. Doctors should also be stopped from going abroad on sponsored tours.
They said the medical stores opened in the hospitals should be closed as these were engaged in marketing costly medicines in collusion with the doctors. They said the hospital pharmacy scheme should be introduced for production of mixtures, ointments and eye drops at a fraction of the market prices for the welfare of poor patients.
They also called for the accountability of the members of the Pakistan and Provincial Pharmacy Council members for engaging in pharmaceutical business. Instead of education and training, they said, the councils were taking interest only in raising funds through renewal of pharmacists’ licences.