For over four years the government has been maintaining that it was drafting a code that would be mandatory for pharmaceuticals in order to ensure ethical marketing by them. But recently it was admitted in the parliament that there were no such plans to bring such mandatory code. 

on May 15, 2016, the government in Lok Sabha mentioned the formation of such a code by stating: “...code was reviewed and it was now decided to make it statutory. Once the code is made statutory it is expected that the unethical practices could be controlled more effectively.” 

Again in June 2016 the then chemical minister said that the voluntary code made to prevent overcharging for medicines was not working and that the government was working to make the code mandatory. But recently on September 18, 2020 when the current chemical minister, Sadananda Gowda was asked in the parliament whether the government was planning to introduce the Uniform Code for Pharmaceutical Marketing Practices (UCPMP) and make it mandatory, the minister gave a negative for the same. The minister said that there is no provision that gives power to the Department of Pharmaceuticals (DOP) to intervene directly. The minister further stated that as per the voluntary code, any complaint received against a pharma company was to be reviewed by an ethical committee or pharma marketing practices which is to be constituted by every pharmaceutical association and that the DoP is following up with the associations to ensure the implementation of the statute. 

The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA), tasked by the DOP to oversee UCPMP implementation, in response to a Right to Information (RTI) application conceded in its reply on September 7 that it is neither mandated nor authorised to monitor pharma marketing practices. This admission from the NPPA came just a few days after it instructed pharma associations and companies on August 26 to submit quarterly reports on the implementation of the code to its office.

In the past years, DoP has not taken any constructive measures to control the issue and all the eyes were on the mandatory code to protect the interests of the people. But with the government taking a turn from its previous statements, the reforms in the pharma marketing come to a standstill till some other reforms are proposed and implemented to improve the current scenario. 


This news has been reported and written by - Ms. Roshni Kapur