Regulate online sale of pregnancy termination kits, demand chemists

Regulate online sale of pregnancy termination kits, demand chemists

Pune: The Chemists Association of Pune District (CAPD) announced that it has requested action against the online sale of Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) kits which can be obtained easily by anyone without any prescription. The association alleged that such access to MTP kits is dangerous and will promote unsupervised abortions if allowed to continue.

Addressing a press conference on Wednesday, Vijay Changedia of the CAPD alleged that many medical e-commerce websites were selling drugs and MTP kits without any prescription. “We ourselves bought one such MTP kit online and did not have to submit any prescription. This is dangerous for our society in the wake of high levels of female foeticide,” Changedia said.

When asked whether the over the counter chemist shops sell such kits, Changedia said that the number is very small and they do not sell them without prescriptions. “The difference between online sellers and chemists is that we have trained our members and none of them will sell a kit without a prescription from an MBBS qualified doctor or gynaecologist. 

These kits are shipped from out of the state. This makes it difficult for authorities like the state Food and Drug Administration to regulate them,” Changedia said. He also showed the kit that he claims to have bought off of and medical e-commerce site omsi.com without a prescription. The kit had a packaging address of one Youngistan Business Solutions in New Delhi.

Demanding that such sale of MTP kits be regulated or banned, the CAPD demanded that there should be action against the sale of prescription based medicines. 

“When we sell a drug, we are careful and monitor our sales. These medical e-commerce sites have their own call centres which generate prescriptions over a phone call. Who will be responsible if something happens to the user in such a case?” Changedia said.

HOW MTP KIT WORKS?
- The Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) kits contains tablets containing  Mifepristone and Misoprostol, which release the foetus from the uterus. 
- This procedure also causes a lot of blood loss and this might make the patient lose consciousness and sometimes even slip into a coma. 
- It is mandated by law that the MTP kit must be issued only on a prescription and used under the supervision of a certified medical professional and only at a medical facility. 

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