Following the National Medical Commission’s (NMC) latest regulation asked the doctors to prescribe generic drugs, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) on August 14 demanded urgent intervention from the government stating that they should not be forced to do the work of chemists, and prescribe “poor quality drugs” to patients.
“The biggest impediment to generic drugs is the uncertainty about its quality. The quality control in the nation being very weak, there’s practically no guarantee of the quality of drugs, and prescribing drugs without assured quality would be detrimental to patient health,” the IMA said in its release.
It further said that less than 0.1% of the drugs manufactured in India are tested for quality. The IMA demanded that this latest step should be deferred till the government can assure the quality of all the drugs released into the market.
The association said that if the government and the NMC want all the doctors in the country to prescribe only generic drugs, they should simply order all pharmaceutical companies to manufacture drugs without brand names.
“This measure is just shifting the job. Doctors’ primary concern, training, and responsibility is patients’ health; it is the chemist/person sitting in a chemist shop, who is selling drugs. This naturally wouldn’t be in the best interest of the patient,’‘ said the association.
The IMA also questioned that if doctors are not allowed to prescribe branded drugs, then why such drugs should be licensed at all, given that modern medicine drugs can be dispensed only on prescription of doctors of this system.
