DSPRUD to tackle antibiotics OTC sale under WHO Programme

EPP News Bureau, New Delhi

THE Delhi Society for Promotion of Rational Use of Drugs (DSRUD) has in a recent meeting with experts, chemists associations and government officials, formulated a multi-pronged agenda to tackle the impact of OTC sale of antibiotics.

The gathering deliberated on various approaches to prevent irrational use of antibiotics, which are one of the most essential and life-saving category drugs. OTC sale leading to self medication cause for drug resistance that will in turn result in putting the society at risk of being devoid of effective medication and compelling it to move to newer generation expensive drugs.

The conclusions of the meeting include educating pharmacists and consumers through various forums and strengthening legislation. The participants have recommended for enhancing manpower at the drug controller office. The Drug Controller of Delhi, Dr Khanijo, in his presentation pointed out the increased stress on booking chemists who sell schedule H drugs over the counter.

Several chemist licenses were cancelled, he said. Making the requirement of qualified pharmacist at chemist shop mandatory and implementing the same stringently was one of the suggestions.

Another recommendation that emerged was to separately group antibiotics under Schedule H and put in place stringent regulations on its over the counter sale. DSPRUD intends to take up the discussions further in smaller groups at different levels and at a later stage identify different group of antibiotics to pursue vigorously.

Antibiotics are freely available in the country without a proper prescription. Such use of antibiotics is considered misuse/abuse, as self-medication can lead to several complications having short term and long term deleterious consequences to the society. Short term complications are improper treatment leading to prolongation of the disease besides several adverse effects like allergic manifestations like asthma, damage to the vital organs like kidney and lever and sometimes can have fatal consequences.

The long-term consequences are development of resistance, which means the particular antibiotic becomes ineffective on further use depriving the patient of treatment and cure of several infective diseases. This applies to many other group of medicines but in case of antibiotics it becomes extremely important as misuse of antibiotics result in the development of resistance, rendering the antibiotics ineffective necessitating the use of newer expensive antibiotics.

DSPRUD under the leadership of Prof.Ranjit Roy Chaudhury and with the support of WHO (India) has taken this initiative. Experts from

different fields like the Practitioners, Chemists and druggist associations, regulatory authorities, planners and those who are actively engaged in the welfare of the community. The prominent figures from the regulatory side include Dr Khanijo, Delhi Drug Controller and Principal Secretary Health.