Hyderabad : The Telangana High Court has sought a detailed report from the Telangana State Drug Control Administration of (TSDCA) and has directed it to reveal as to how many number of pharmacy stores and medical shops have been granted permission and how many of the pharmacy stores in the state are running without license or with expired license.
The high court division bench led by Chief Justice Hima Kohli and Justice B Vijayasen Reddy was dealing with a letter written by A Setarambabu, a pharmacist, who had represented to the high court in his letter that majority of pharmacy stores in Hyderabad and various other districts in Telangana were running their shops without proper registrations and they were operating the medical stores against the rules and regulations and not abiding by the Pharmacy Act.
Considering the letter as Public Interest Litigation (PIL), the high court bench directed the state government and the concerned officials of the drug control administration to submit a detailed report as to how many pharmacy stores are registered in the state, how many medical stores have been inspected by the drug inspectors and how many of them have been found to have been violating the rules and regulations stipulated by the Pharmacy Act of 1948.
“As per the Pharmacy Act 1948, certain rules and regulations have been laid out to regulate the pharmacy profession. As per this act, each and every medical store must be registered and must function as per the set rules and regulations and the drug inspectors or the pharmacy inspectors are entitled to regularly monitor and inspect the pharmacy stores and check if the medical shops are functioning as per the set rules or not. However, of late what we have found is that majority medical shops in the state are running without the presence of registered or qualified pharmacists. Moreover many of them are selling some of the scheduled medicines without proper doctor’s prescription. Not just this some of the pharmacies are also resorting to selling not of quality medicines and expired medicines at highly exorbitant rates and looting the public. In view of this we wanted to know from the TSDCA as to how many registered pharmacies are there in the state and how many of them have been granted licenses and how many of them have lapsed their tenure and still running in the state. What we have observed is that most of the medical shops are dispensing medicines without appointing qualified pharmacists and many are running the business by taking the certificates of pharmacists on lease,” observed Seetharambabu.
In view of this, the pharmacist had filed a complained with the high court, following which the HC had taken the complaint letter as PIL and directed the state government and the DCA to submit a detailed report about the affairs of medical shops and pharmacy stores in the state.
