Medical services flatline in Rajasthan

On Friday, more than 5,000 medical shops in Jaipur and around 45,000 medical shops in Rajasthan remained closed over the union government’s decision to regularize online pharmacies.

The medical shops, including the wholesale shops that abound in the Film Colony and those that operate outside the Sawai Man Singh Hospital, the largest operating public sector hospital in state, remained closed. The support for the call for nationwide shutdown in other districts was more or less the same, with most chemists shutting down their outlets on Friday. An almost total shutdown was reported from Kota and Jodhpur despite government’s call to private hospitals to keep their drug stores open.

“All the shops across the state remained closed today, business worth Rs 75-100 crore was affected in a single day due to the strike,” informed Ajay Agarwal, spokesperson of Rajasthan Chemist Association.

As per a rough estimate trade worth Rs 10-12 crore went down the drain in Jaipur due to closure of more than 5,000 shops.The result was that patients were seen going from one market to another in search of medicines.

The situation of patients who were admitted to the hospital did not suffer much as hospitals had stocked medicines after the state health department swung into action to lessen the impact of the bandh and tackle the shortfall of medicines for in-patient departments. However, the patients of OPD were seen carrying the prescription from the doctor and were looking for outlets that could provide them the said medicines.

There was some relief to the pensioners who could get a limited supply of medicines from the medical stores run by the cooperative department. But largely the patients felt helpless as the shops remained closed throughout the day.

The branded medical stores had already sent advance text messages to their customers informing them about the strike and to arrange for emergency medicines in advance.

The state government had made arrangements to make sure that medicines were available in abundance at all Community Health Centers, Primary Health Centers, District Hospitals, Sub Centers, Hospitals associated to Medical Colleges, PM Jan Aushadhi Kendra, Life Line Fluid Stores and Co operative medical stores across the state.

The Threat

The traditional medical shops are seeing the online pharmacy business as a threat and want that the provisions of online pharmacy should not be made legal. There are a large number of people who have started buying medicines from online pharmacy platforms.
They say that it’s against rules of Drugs and Cosmetics Act 1945 and the proposed set of provisions for online retailers go against interest of traditional shops.

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