For last couple of days, there were several posts regarding the issue of pharmaceutical promotion. As I was privileged to do a comprehensive thesis on this issue under the supervision of Prof. Md. Sayedur Rahman sir during my residency course in BSMMU, so tried to answer some of queries. This post is going to discuss those queries in a brief.
Question No 1. Is there any available guideline or law or policy to control pharmaceutical promotion?
Answer: Yes, there is a existing code titled ‘Code of Pharmaceutical Marketing Practices’, formulated by DGDA in 1994.
Question No 2: For whom this code is intended for?
Answer: For both physicans and industries.
Question No 3: Do this code allow acceptance of gift from industries?
Answer: It is expected that physicians shall not accept any gift or financial inducement, only non-expensive gifts are allowed.
The Code has several weakness, specially in monitoring and implementation process. Another thing is the Code was never ever updated in last 25 years.
We have a published research work where we compared our existing code with global documents.
Dr. Fatema Johora
Session: 2005-2006
Sir Salimullah Medical College
Working as Assistant Professor of Pharmacology and Therapeutics in Army Medical College Bogura, Bogura Cantonment.
Link of the article is given for interested readers:
https://www.banglajol.info/index.php/BSMMUJ/article/view/42702
https://www.banglajol.info/index.php/BJP/article/view/36752