Deeba Khan, Ph D scholar, School of Law, University of Kashmir
F.A. Rafiqi, Former Professor, School of Law, University of Kashmir
ABSTRACT
The dawn of cyber highway technology has brought in a revolution in almost all spheres of human activity including the trade and commercial transactions. Influenced by the notions that online purchases are economical and do not require a prescription, the general public are keen to purchase medicine online through websites, social media and mobile apps. Online medicine purchase is presumed to be convenient and confidential, free from embarrassment of sharing personal and sensitive health information to a healthcare professional. But it has been observed that this technological facility is often used to pass-on spurious and fake medicines with larger consumer base without any effective legal control.
Online pharmacies are facing numerous challenges such as its legality, regulatory issues, verification of prescriptions, sale of certain prohibited medicines and more importantly about authenticity and genuineness of the drugs. The World Health Organisation has revealed that about 50% of the drugs for sale on the internet are fake and even though the online dispensaries might look legitimate, a survey of 10,000 of them done by America's National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) found that 9938 did not comply with NABP patient safety and pharmacy practice standards or US state and federal laws. In India the situation is not any different so there is an immediate need to address this problem in a pragmatic and effective manner, lest it will be a monster to reckon with. In this paper an attempt will be made to assess the impact of e-medicines on the public health in general and India in particular.
Keywords: e-medicine, spurious drugs, drug abuse, fake medicine, e- pharmacy
