The Union government has no plans to make the Uniform Code of Pharmaceutical Marketing Practices (UCPMP), which is indirectly linked to the cost of drugs charged by private companies, mandatory across the country. This was informed by Union Minister for Chemical and Fertilizers D. V. Sadananda Gowda in reply to a starred question raised by K. Muraleedharan, Congress MP from Vadakara in Kerala, in the Lok Sabha recently.
The UCPMP was made voluntary for six months from January 1, 2015. It was to be reviewed after six months. H.N. Ananth Kumar, the then Union Minister for Chemicals and Fertilizers, had said in the Rajya Sabha in June 2016 that the voluntary code introduced in 2015 had not yielded desired results and that the government would make it mandatory.
Functionaries of the Alliance of Doctors for Ethical Health Care (ADEH), a national forum of medical professionals, pointed out on Monday that the non-compliance to the code by the pharma companies was adding up to the cost of drugs and also encouraged corrupt practices. Arun Mitra and K.V. Babu, ADEH functionaries, claimed that some of the private companies spent crores of rupees by sponsoring medical conferences through doctors’ groups. They spent a huge amount on travel, accommodation and other expenditures of doctors for the lavish arrangements of the conferences.
“As per clause 7.2 of the UCPMP, ‘the companies or their associations/representatives shall not extend any hospitality like hotel accommodation to health-care practitioners and their family members under any pretext’. The implied meaning of this is that even extending benefits to the doctors through associations is unethical. But this is being flouted with impunity by the pharma companies to promote their business,” they noted.
‘Make it mandatory’
The ADEH has been demanding that the UCPMP be made mandatory to bring fairness in marketing of drugs as the industry had failed to comply with the code on a voluntary basis. The global experience also shows that voluntary code does not work. “The government in 2016 had indicated that it would make the code statutory. This U-turn raises suspicion of lack of will on the part of the government to keep its commitment and smells of some unfair deals between the government and the pharma companies,” they alleged.
