281 cases against medical shops

HYDERABAD: The Drug Control Administration (DCA) on Monday conducted raids on registered pharmacists and other medical outlets as part of their statewide special drive. The officials also conducted raids on retail outlets of corporate pharmacies like Apollo, Hetero Pharmacy, Medimart and Medplus and booked as many as 281 cases against the medical shops.In a statement, R P Thakur, director general, Drugs and Copyrights, Drugs Control Administration said that the DCA carried out raids on medical shops across the state after receiving several complaints that the services of registered pharmacies were not available to the consumers.They conducted inspections in 406 retail medical shops throughout the state till 4 p.m. and out of these 281 retail medical shops were found selling medicines in the absence of registered pharmacists and without bills. All the licensing authorities and assistant directors were directed to issue showcause notices to the violators and appropriate action following the notices would be taken by the licensing authorities."Besides issuing showcause notices, the shops will be closed for one week. If the same violation is repeated, we will cancel their licence," Thakur said.He said every shop should have a pharmacist, which is one of the clauses while issuing licence. "Even some expired drugs are being sold without bills and we have checked all these aspects in today's raid," Thakur said.