Lokmat News Network
Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar
The National Medical Commission (NMC) has issued new regulations for doctors making it mandatory for them to prescribe generic medicines. The doctors can be penalized or their licenses can be suspended for some period on violation of the regulations.
The decision will relieve the patients from buying costly branded medicines. However, the doctors claimed that no order has been issued for prescribing the generic medicines so far. Similarly, there are a lot of difficulties in implementing the order.
There has always been a hue and cry over the doctors compelling the patients to purchase costly branded medicines from shops attached to the hospitals. It is mandatory for doctors to write the content names instead of the brand names. However, it has been seen that only the names of brands are written on the prescription stating that generic medicines are not available. Now according to the regulations of NMC, the doctors will have to prescribe only generic medicines.
The president of the Physicians Association Dr Sanjay Patne said, after receiving the directives, the association will appeal to all the doctors to write the generic medicines. It is not the case that all generic medicines are good, hence the government should do quality control.
The president of the Indian Medical Association (IMA) local branch Dr Yashwant Gade said the patent medicines are generic medicines. Presently, the doctor prescribes both the content and the company’s brand name. Many content names are too long and it is difficult to write. Hence, the names of the brands are written. We are not aware so far that it is a compulsion to write only generic names.