Govt considers plan to check overprescription of drugs

Samaan Lateef

Tribune News Service

Srinagar April 20

Amid overprescription of drugs in J&K, the state government is considering establishing pharmacovigilance offices in medical colleges to monitor prescription by medical practitioners.

Health officials say the prescription written by registered medical practitioners shall be audited by the experts in pharmacovigilance wings and reports should be submitted to the competent authority.

“We are facing an epidemic of overprescription of drugs in the state. To discourage this practice and to take necessary action against those who indulge in it, a pharmacovigilance wing should be incorporated in the medical colleges,” a senior health official in the Civil Secretariat told The Tribune.

He said the recommendations have come from the Director Health Services Kashmir Dr Saleem-ur-Rehman, who is chairman of the committee for drafting the J&K Health Policy to improve the healthcare system. Quoting Dr Rehman, the official said the standard treatment guidelines would be prepared as a tool to assist physicians and other officials who prescribe drugs at medical facilities for providing quality healthcare to patients.

The recommendations are part of evidence-based standard treatment protocols, which stress the need to optimise patient care by a systematic review of the evidence and assessment of benefits and harms of alternative healthcare options.

Health officials say there is a nexus between pharmaceutical companies and doctors, who indulge in overprescribing of drugs. “Aggressive marketing by pharmaceutical companies and dishonesty on part of some doctors have been major factors in pushing drugs on patients well beyond the point of clinical usefulness,” officials said. To benefit pharmaceutical companies, they said some doctors have been prescribing drugs, particularly antibiotics, beyond the requirement of the patients. Also, over the years the state has been hit by various scams of spurious drugs, which has drawn severe public criticism of which doctors were "first victims".

However, doctors say the drugs which are available in the distribution system are quality drugs unless proven otherwise. The onus of keeping quality drugs available in hospitals and market is entirely the duty of government agencies formulated for the purpose, including the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization, said Dr Masood Rashid, executive member of the Doctors Association Kashmir.

“Ethically, doctors should avoid prescribing drugs which don’t have good efficacy but legally we can prescribe them as any drug, whether substandard or of good quality comes to market only after the approval of the government,” he said.

Nexus between docs, pharma firms

Health officials say there is a nexus between pharmaceutical companies and doctors, who indulge in overprescription of drugs. “Aggressive marketing by pharmaceutical companies and dishonesty on part of some doctors have been major factors in pushing drugs on patients well beyond the point of clinical usefulness,” said an official.