Label drugs properly, don't manipulate sale

HOW much would a doctor’s prescription for 14 tablets, priced at Rs 40 a tablet, cost a consumer? If your answer is Rs 560, you are wrong. The right reply is Rs 800. Before you start thinking that I cannot do even simple addition, let me clarify that Rs 560 is what the bill ought to be, but Rs 800 is what the chemist charged. How? By refusing to cut the blister pack of 10 tablets and forcing the consumer to buy 20 tablets instead of 14.

Sounds familiar? This is what happened to a reader. His gastroenterologist advised medication for seven days, two tablets per day. However, he ended up spending Rs 240 more for a medicine that was already expensive and acquiring six additional tablets that he did not want, only because the chemist did not want to suffer a loss! What about the loss of Rs 240 that the consumer suffered?

This kind of manipulation of sale, imposing unjustified and unreasonable costs on consumers, clearly falls under the definition of ‘Unfair Trade Practice’ and ‘Restrictive Trade Practice’ under the Consumer Protection Act. And the law gives the consumer the right to be protected from such machinations. Yet, consumers continue to be victims of such illegal practices.

This ‘forced sale’ causes individual consumers considerable financial loss, particularly when the medicine costs are high. But to consumers as a class, the loss is enormous, running into crores. Such sale of excess medicine also leads to considerable wastage. But even more unfortunate, the chemists’refusal to split the pack often leads to the poor not completing the course of medication prescribed or taking less than advised. A doctor recently told me about how a patient, who had been advised antibiotics for five days at the rate of three per day, consumed only two tablets per day because the medical store refused to cut a strip and give her 15 tablets.

The extent of such coercive selling can be gauged from a recent nationwide survey by LocalCircles, which revealed that three out of four households surveyed reported wastage of varying quantities of unused medicines. While 50 per cent blamed it on chemists selling more than what they needed, 18 per cent made the same observations about e-pharmacies.

Chemists blame the pharmaceutical companies and say that manufacturers do not take back unsold drugs if the pack is cut. So, if a cut strip does not get sold, chemists say they have to bear the loss. These days, even consumers refuse to buy split packs, they claim.

The root cause of the problem is the highly flawed placement of label information on these blister packs. A consumer-friendly package should be labelled in such a way that even when it is cut, every piece should have all the relevant information, including the name of the drug, its strength and composition, date of manufacture, expiry, batch number, price, name and address of the manufacturer. However, if you see the package labelling today, this information is divided into two separate groups. One is printed, the other is stamped at one end and when you cut the pack, you do not get all the information. Instead of correcting this flaw, manufacturers and chemists are exploiting it to sell more.

What is unfortunate is that despite consumer complaints for more than a decade, neither the Central drug control authority nor the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has put a stop to this practice. The Union Ministry of Consumer Affairs has now taken it up with the pharmaceutical industry and the health ministry.

The solution lies in the pharmaceutical industry printing all the required label information, without exception, all along the blister pack, so that it can be cut without losing any information. Smaller packages containing a lesser number of tablets or capsules should also become mandatory. The Pharmacy Act and the Drugs (Control) Act should also be tweaked to ensure stringent action against coercive selling.

Meanwhile, the Central Consumer Protection Authority should issue directions to state drug control authorities to ensure that consumers are not overcharged. If a chemist does not want to cut a blister pack, he can give the full pack to the consumer, but he should only charge for the number of capsules that the consumer requires. If chemists suffer loss on account of such sales, their association is strong enough to get compensation from the manufacturer. But consumer exploitation has gone on for too long and this has to stop.

Consumers, too, should haul up chemists and pharmaceutical companies before the consumer courts for such unfair and restrictive trade practices and seek not just compensation but also punitive damages.

— The writer is a consumer affairs expert