Govt plans to stop chemists from forcing consumers to buy entire tablet strips. Here's how

Local pharmacies are known to force patients to buy an entire strip of tablets prescribed by a doctor even if they require the medicine for just three days. This works out to be expensive for patients who are forced to buy the entire strip or nothing at all and also leads to wastage of medicines as well.

However, the good news for patients is that this situation may change as the government has finally taken cognisance of this issue.

According to news reports, the department of consumer affairs has held its first meeting on this issue of forcing customers to buy entire tablet strips at pharmacies, with senior representatives in the pharma and medical devices industry. The Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) senior officials were also present at the meeting.

One of the few solutions suggested at the meeting involved the use of new technologies in the packaging of these medicines to help protect consumer interest, added the news reports.

For example, the plan that has been proposed by the consumer affairs ministry is to sell “perforated medicine strips” with each segment of the strip carrying the manufacturing and expiry dates. This will help the consumer to get the complete information of the medicine even if they need to buy only a few tablets instead of the entire strip. Also, it will be easy for the chemist to cut it wherever possible.

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At the meeting, another option was also discussed. This had to do with printing scannable QR codes either on the medicine strips or on each tablet or capsule if it is a viable option.

This problem reportedly came to the attention of the government after the consumer affairs ministry witnessed a spike in such complaints on its National Consumer Helpline (NCH). This helpline is run by the ministry.

Chemists usually are quick to cut strips of fast moving medicines but they don’t do it for slow moving medicines and drugs. A PTI report which quoted an industry source said that this is largely because pharmaceutical companies or distributors refuse to take back the unsold medicines with cut strips in case they expire. But for patients it is an extra financial burden they may not want to bear.