The Supreme Court has said that doctors should ask doctors to write only generic medicines in their prescription. This important comment has been made by the court listening to a case that has demanded to make the rules related to the marketing of medicines legally binding. This petition of an organization called Federation of Medical and Sales Representatives Association of India was filed in 2021.
Serious questions arose about Dolo 650
This petition was filed on the basis of serious questions raised on Dolo 650, one of the most written medicines being written by the doctors during Kovid. The institution of medical representatives had claimed that the dose of paracetamol in Dolo 650 was kept excessively. This was done to make the medicine expensive. The company gave the doctors a variety of greed and wrote the same medicine from them. In the petition, it was said by the pharmaceutical company to give gifts to doctors and spend 1000 crores for traveling abroad.
It was told in the petition that the government has maintained the Uniform Code of Pharmaceutical Marketing Practices, but it has not been made legally binding. Paragraphs 6 and 7 of this code are forbidden to distribute gifts or other benefits to doctors and other people, but this code is not given the form of law.
‘Need to make generic medicine mandatory for doctors’
On Thursday (May 1), the petition started for hearing in the bench of Justices Vikram Nath, Sanjay Karol and Sandeep Mehta. The bench said that if it is made mandatory for doctors to write generic medicine in the whole country, then this problem will be solved. Justice Mehta said, “There is a government order in Rajasthan that doctors will not write any brand medicine in the prescription. This order was issued on the basis of a decision of the High Court.”
The court asked the petitioner to keep the decision of the Rajasthan High Court in 2011 in the ‘Vijay Mehta vs State Government’ case. The next hearing of the case will be on 24 July. On behalf of the government, the court was told that the Indian Medical Council has instructed doctors to write generic medicine. The Parliamentary Committee of Health Affairs has also reported on this issue. It is being considered to implement it.
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