Be careful where you buy your medicine from, since nearly half of the country’s pharmacies are unregistered and run by untrained professionals who sell a variety of drugs without being aware of the side effects.
According to the Directorate General of Drug Administration (DGDA), the country has 107,357 pharmacies with valid licences (as of April 2014), including 8,329 pharmacies that were handed licences in 2013.
A senior official at the DGDA, however, said the DGDA had run a survey in 2013 and found that the country had a further 100,000 pharmacies that were unregistered.
The number of pharmacies has reportedly grown tenfold since 1990, when the number of registered pharmacies was only 22,000.
When asked about the actual number of unregistered pharmacies, SM Sabrina Yesmin, a drug superintendent of the DGDA, told the Dhaka Tribune that they had not added up the huge list of unregistered pharmacies at different districts and upazilas sent by the drug superintendents concerned. However, snubbing out allegations that there were over 100,000 illegal pharmacies in the country, DGDA Director Selim Barami claimed that the number of unregistered pharmacies would not exceed 10,000.
According to the existing drug act, no pharmacy can be given a licence and allowed to run its business if it did not have a registered trained pharmacist.
Md Ruhul Amin, a director and spokesman of the DGDA, told the Dhaka Tribune that they were trying to get all the pharmacies to procure licences and to ensure the appointment of trained pharmacists.
From January to December last year, 169 mobile court drives were conducted in 646 pharmacies; with a total Tk41,972,000 fines imposed and 163 people sent to jail, he added.
“In 2013, at least 673 cases were lodged against pharmacies for a number of reasons including operating without registration and selling unregistered, substandard drugs,” Ruhul Amin said.
According to the Pharmacy Council of Bangladesh, it had issued valid registrations to only 81,117 people as “C” category pharmacists.
On the other hand, the DGDA has reportedly given more than 26,000 drug licences without cross-checking if the pharmacists had valid registration.
Seeking anonymity, several senior DGDA officials claimed that it was near-impossible for only a limited number of drug administration officials to monitor over 200,000 pharmacies, as they also had to oversee a vast array of tasks including inspecting pharmacies, and regulating import, export, sales and pricing of all medicines.
The DGDA currently has less than 60 officials who are tasked with monitoring and supervising the entire drug sector.
In 2012, the ICDDRB conducted a cross-sectional study of 100 randomly selected pharmacies in the capital, only to find that during 600 consultations, pharmacists had dispensed drugs in 76% of the cases.
Although the National Drug Policy prohibits pharmacists from dispensing any antibiotic without a physician’s prescription, the ICDDRB study found that 37% of patients received antibiotics and 39% received other drugs from pharmacies without prescription.
ABM Faruque, professor of the pharmacy department at Dhaka University, said medicine was not an everyday commodity like rice or potato, and the person in charge of a pharmacy must have a valid certificate from the pharmacy council and have enough knowledge about the safe and rational use of drugs.
The common antibiotic drugs were now unable to treat most patients as the indiscriminate use of the medicines has made people drug-resistant, he added.
Faruque said the DU pharmacy department ran a sample survey in 2011-2012 on 187 pharmacies (representative samples from metropolitans, districts, upazilas and villages), and estimated that the country had around 221,000 pharmacies – both registered and unregistered. At the time, DGDA figures put the number of licensed pharmacies at 82,000.
Monir Hossain, assistant secretary general of Bangladesh Chemist and Druggist Somittee, admitted that the number of unregistered and illegal pharmacies has been increasing and most of them were running without trained pharmacists.
He alleged that the DGDA authority was issuing several pharmacy licences against a single registration number.
Sources within the drug administration also told the Dhaka Tribune that an unscrupulous quarter has been producing fake pharmacy council slips, which are being used to issue thousands of pharmacy licences.