Maharashtra: Regulations soon for e-pharmacy

The Indian Express
May 04, 2018

The central government has proposed amendments to the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, 1945, to bring in regulation to permit online sale of drugs. A final draft proposal to invite suggestions from stakeholders is yet to be released. On Thursday, representatives from the All India Organisation of Chemists and Druggists (AIOCD) met officials from the Union health ministry to oppose the e-pharmacy regulations. “Online sale of drugs will affect retail sale to a large extent. We are against e-pharmacy as it is difficult to regulate online sale of scheduled drugs. How can we ensure scheduled drugs are sold after thorough scrutiny of prescriptions?” said Jagannath Shinde, president of AIOCD.

The draft proposal permits an online portal to sell medicines after registering with the Central Licensing Authority. Based on recommendations by the drug technical advisory board, each online pharmacy portal will be issued licence for three years and has to be inspected by the state and central drug authorities within two years. The registration fee for the licence is Rs 50,000. “It is a welcome move. We have been urging the government to bring in regulation so that we can do business under legal framework,” said Prashant Tandon, founder and CEO of 1 mg website.

“We are waiting for final draft regulation. A centralised registration will ease the procedure,” he added. Maharashtra is one of the few states along with Punjab that has cracked down on e-pharma websites. In the last six months, Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration (FDA) received two complaints of allegedly defective medicines purchased through online portals.

“Since there is no law, we consider e-pharmacy illegal. In Maharashtra, online websites selling drugs are issued notices. But our jurisdiction ends in other states that deliver medicines in Maharashtra through online sale,” said FDA assistant commissioner S Mohite, adding that Maharashtra FDA recently wrote to Delhi and Uttar Pradesh FDAs informing them about online medicine sale in Mumbai through websites registered in the two states. Officials with FDA added that in absence of regulation and no IT laws to monitor drug sale online, locating the manufacturers, distributors, retailers and couriers dispensing the drug becomes difficult.

“We have already placed measures to check prescriptions before selling drugs online. E-pharma portals are in fact more concerned about drug abuse,” said Pradeep Dadha, CEO of Netmeds Marketplace Ltd. He added that currently online pharmacy accounts for 1 per cent of total market share of drug sale.

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