IT'S NO LONGER POSSIBLE.............

It’s no longer possible for one to buy antibiotics without doctor’s prescription!

Posted on October 30th, 2010 in Health News

By agencies
New Delhi: Who should be held responsible for the abuse of antibiotics? Is it the doctors who prescribe it or is it the patients who buy it without any prescription?
Whatever the case may be, the government has decided to curb this antibiotic abuse. This Friday the Drug Controller General of India has introduced new rules to buy antibiotics
.
From now onwards in order to buy antibiotics, one will require to produce 2 copies of a prescription; out of the 2 one will be kept in the chemist’s custody.
Along with this a new schedule called HX will be added to drugs and cosmetics in order to keep a check on habit forming drugs and antibiotics. This step has been taken by the government to curb the overuse of antibiotics.
Surinder Singh, Drug Controller General of India stated “Doctors prescribing powerful anti-biotics for common ailments will know that they can be pulled up because a copy of the prescription will be given to the chemist who will have to keep it for a year…can be used for audits.”
While antibiotics were not allowed to be sold over-the-counter before, without a prescription, under Schedule H of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act and Rules, this was hardly implemented. Now, the Union ministry of health placed antibiotics under a separate schedule, H1.
Further, a new schedule called HX will soon be added to the drugs and cosmetics act to keep a check on antibiotics and habit-forming drugs. This will include -antibiotics, anti-TB drugs, habit-forming drugs like Corex and Phensedyl cough syrups, sedatives and anti-anxiety drugs such as Diazepam and Alprax.
About 70 drugs including antibiotics will come under the new Schedule HX. Violators will be punished with a fine of Rs20,000 or upto two years imprisonment.
According to a senior health ministry official, there are about 500 'prescription'drugsunder Schedule H, including antibiotics. Having a sub-regulation was discussed to make the enforcement stringent. The proposal has now been sent to the Union health ministry for approval.
Government is also likely to come out with a comprehensive policy by next month on the use of antibiotics which include setting up of a task force and involvement of NGOs for enforcement of regulations.
The health ministry is considering a separate colour code for high-end antibiotics needed only in tertiary care. "This will make it easy to identify the high-end antibiotics," said the health official.
At a meeting last week, presided over by director general of health services (DGHS), Dr RK Srivastava, and attended by experts from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), National Centre for Communicable Diseases (NCDC), Hinduja Hospital, Mumbai, and other institutes, a range of measures were discussed to regulate the use of antibiotics in the country.
Experts have also recommended separate sets of antibiotics depending on the disease - meaning mild ones for out-patient and emergency patients and strong and high-end antibiotics for those under intensive care.
The idea behind the drug controller general of India's latest move is to curb overuse of antibiotics.