Tripura chemists join 24-hour nationwide strike

The association is protesting against the central government’s alleged move to regularise the sale of medicines through e-pharmacies on the Internet.

The All India Organisation of Chemist and Druggists claims that online medicines sale pose a big threat to consumer health and also violates the law, as on several occasions pharmacists need to check the prescriptions before issuing the drugs.

The national chemists and druggists body has around eight lakh member chemists across the country.

According to the association, Delhi has around 7,000 chemist shops.

Under the current drug and cosmetics act drugs can’t be sold online. And Maharashtra Food & Drug Administration had taken action against one e-commerce website, Snapdeal.com, in Mumbai last May for selling a few prescription medicines on line.

Addressing the meeting, General Secretary of the Association Chandra Prakash Baatla said the proposed provision of online sales would also promote sale of “banned” medicines and also those sold only on doctor’s prescription.

Online pharmacies are a relatively new phenomenon in India, where mom-and-pop stores have long dispensed drugs. In its submission to the Committee, AIOCD made it clear that it would not be advisable to amend D&C Act and Rules for allowing the sale of medicines through internet. Saying that there was no qualified doctor in rural areas of the country, AIOCD said that in such areas, unqualified doctors would order or prescribe medicines through e-pharmacy if the system was legalized.

A senior officials from All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) told IANS: “The AIIMS pharmacy has enough stocks of medicines”.

Allowing online sale of all medicines would render over two crore people jobless, Tamba said.

Approximately 800,000 chemists to be on strike, says AIOCD president J S Shinde.

However, sources said the Department of Pharma has taken a tough stand against the AIOCD strike call.

Anand said the government should crack down any kind of online sale of medicines as it raises the risk of misuse of drugs. However, just to point out, an offline prescription can also be used at different pharmacies to procure lots of drugs since prescriptions in India are not marked as “used” by the pharmacy which originally supplied the prescribed drugs.