Alliance of Doctors for Ethical Healthcare, urges Government to make Ethics Code Mandatory for Pharma Cos.

Moneylife Digital Team 21 January 2020

Life

Speaking out against pharma sponsored freebies for medical practitioners, doctors under the Alliance of Doctors for Ethical Healthcare (ADEH) have demanded that the Uniform Code of Pharmaceutical Marketing Practices (UCPMP) be made mandatory for all pharma companies. This press release comes days after reports that the Prime Minister had warned pharma companies of bribing doctors.

The UPCMP code, which was prepared by the Department of Pharmaceuticals in 2014 as a code of marketing practices for the Indian Pharmaceutical industry, has remained a voluntary regulation to be adopted by pharma companies.

“It is unfortunate that even after 5 years the code remains voluntary. This is despite the fact that global experience also shows that voluntary code does not work,” stated the ADEH in its press release.

According to ADEH, pharma companies, “spend crores of rupees through associations by sponsoring medical conferences. They spend a huge amount on travel, accommodation and other expenditures on the doctors for lavish arrangements of the conferences.”

As per the Indian Medical Council (Professional Conduct, Etiquette and Ethics) Regulation, 2002, doctors are “mandatorily prohibited from taking gifts, travel facilities, hospitality and cash or monetary grants from pharmaceutical and allied health sector industry”. The said regulation further authorises the Medical Council of India (MCI) and respective State Medical Councils to award punishment to a doctor against any act in violation of the code of Ethics for doctors.

As per clause 7.2 of the UCPMP, “companies or their associations/representative shall not extend any hospitality like hotel accommodation to health care practitioners and their family members under any pretext”. But since the aforementioned codes have to be adopted voluntarily, the ADEH claims that pharma companies are flouting the regulations with impunity.

The release also makes mention of the Medical Council of India (MCI) amending the Indian Medical Council (Professional Condict, Etiquette & Ethics) Regulations, 2002 to exempt the Professional Association of Doctors from the purview of medical ethics. “There is an urgent need to take steps to reserve this amendment of the MCI and make the UCPMP mandatory,” reads the release.

ADEH has also asked the government to take appropriate action to bring corporate hospitals under the purview of medical ethics as they “take advantage and openly flout” medical ethics since they are currently not covered under it.

Addressing the issue of tax treatment of expenses by pharma companies on freebies, the ADEH release states that the Central Bureau of Direct Taxes had decided in 2012 that no tax exemption will be given for such expenses since they were forbidden under MCI’s ethics code. However, in July 2018, the Pune bench of the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal reversed this in a separate ruling. Thus far this ruling has not been challenged by the government and ADEH has demanded that they take corrective action by making the expenses on freebies taxable.

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