Panel to take a call on doorstep medicine delivery

New Delhi: The country’s top advisory body on drugs has proposed to constitute a sub-committee to decide if people can continue to get medicines at their doorstep.The issue has come under scrutiny with the All-India Organisation of Chemists and Druggists (AIOCD), which represents 1.24 million chemists and distributors, demanding withdrawal of a government notification that allows doorstep delivery of drugs. The government had allowed the facility in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The matter was taken up last week by the Drugs Technical Advisory Board (DTAB). “The DTAB deliberated the issue and recommended to constitute a sub-committee to examine the matter in detail before considering withdrawal of the notification,” according to the minutes of its meeting.

The AIOCD had demanded withdrawal of the notification, alleging its misuse by digital platforms. After this, the health ministry asked the DTAB to give its recommendation.

The March 2020 notification allowed doorstep delivery of medicines under certain conditions, such as the requirement to stamp the prescription for the sale of medicines.

The AIOCD said the emergency phase of the pandemic no longer exists, therefore the notification is no longer relevant and should be revoked immediately.In a letter to union health minister JP Nadda early this year, the organisation highlighted what it termed “mounting concern regarding the continued misuse of this notification by various digital platforms”, and said: “We fear with our past observations this practice of dispensing medicines without validated prescriptions appears to prioritise profit over patient welfare.”The AIOCD said it failed to understand why the government was extending “undue privileges” to such platforms. “This leniency has sown the seeds of alarming possibilities, multiple dispensations on a single prescription, escalating the dependency and an upsurge in self-medication which can inflict irreversible harm,” it said.

India’s online pharmacies currently operate in a regulatory grey area. Retail chemists’ organisations have been protesting the sale of medicines through e-pharmacies since they are not regulated.

The government has proposed legislation on multiple occasions but has yet to frame one.

In 2018, the health ministry released a draft notification regulating e-pharmacies, proposing to ban the selling of medicines without registration. The draft also proposed a ban on the sale of narcotics, psychotropic drugs and tranquillisers by online pharmacies. But the rules could not be finalised.