The final decision has been made by the Maharashtra Medical Council and banned rampant prescription of allopathy drugs by doctors of other branches except for allopathic ones. Doctors from other branches used to prescribe allopathy medicines with their homeopathy or ayurvedic medicines.
Council took a final decision in the last meeting held between medical councils of over 24 states of India. Cross prescription of medicines is very common practice in the country and Medical council finally decided to take a stand against the way of prescribing homeopathy or ayurvedic medicines along with allopathy drugs.
All the state governments have been informed with the recommendation and also the central health ministry. Maharashtra Medical Council (MIC) has also decided that the only registered doctors with the council can prescribe allopathy drugs.
Back in the 1990s, The Maharashtra state council gave permission to ayurvedic doctors to prescribe allopathic medicines to an extent. But no rules were defined as there was a huge lack in the number of allopathy doctors and rural areas were facing a lot of inconveniences. To tackle the situation, doctors from other medical branches working in the rural parts were allowed to prescribe emergency medicines.
Dr. Shivkumar Utture, president of MMC said that the situation is changed now and the common medicines that were allowed are for cold, cough, fever etc. but since then, now the state has as many as 6,000 allopathy doctors passing out every year in the state. There is no need to allow other branches to prescribe allopathic drugs. The decision is also concerned with the Medical Council Act of 1965, and as per the Supreme Court judgments, which states modern medicines should be prescribed only by doctors who hold an MBBS degree.
Now, as the state has enough allopathy doctors, other doctors should not be allowed to practice modern medicine and other states also put a blanket ban on this crosspathy practice.
Dr. Dilip Sarda, member of MMC also shared that Presidents of several state medical councils also get agreed that there should no crosspathy of drugs as there are many doctors which prescribe antibiotics rampantly and this leads to resistance to these drugs.
The other concern is lack of knowledge as the duration of pharmacology subject taught in other medicinal streams is merely six months, which is not adequate enough for treating a patient as it is half-baked knowledge.
