A nationwide strike by the drug retailers on Tuesday seemed to have dampened one of the government's digital health initiatives to regulate the sale of medicines in the country. Mumbai-based Jagannath Shinde, president of the All India Organisation of Chemists and Druggists said that the strike had its genesis in a public notice by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, issued on March 16, for establishing an e-portal to regulate the sale of medicines.
According to the notice, drug retailers were asked to upload the sale and purchase details online, among other rules such as mandatory registration. "If it becomes a law, we will also be required to submit a fee of one percent to the government. Since the government already controls our margins, why should we pay extra one per cent?," he said.
Shinde contends that the problem of uploading data will be compounded in rural areas where pharmacists, most of who don't have access to internet, would be required to travel nearby tehsils to do so. "Since the GST regime requires us to register sale and purchase data anyway, repeating the task is unnecessary," said Shinde.
Even as concerns are being raised over rising anti-microbial resistance (AMR) by the Centre, Shinde said that an e-portal will not help the situation. AMR, he said, was arising because of issues such as inadequate dosage, inferior drug quality and people combining treatment from different streams of medicines such as allopathy, homeopathy and Ayurveda. Shinde also pointed out that the fact that the state regulators had issued directives to dispense cut-strips (part doses) to patients, and unless such regulatory issues were resolved, an e-portal would not help reduce AMR, or benefit patients, especially those in rural areas.
