An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The Pri­vate Phar­ma­cy Busi­ness Cham­ber (PPBC) is blam­ing an­ti­quat­ed and out­dat­ed leg­is­la­tion as the main cat­a­lyst be­hind the se­ries of raids be­ing car­ried out at phar­ma­cies across the coun­try.

The as­so­ci­a­tion’s com­ment comes in the wake of Fri­day’s seizure of 14,227 un­reg­is­tered phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal items val­ued at over $1.5 mil­lion at a ware­house in Trinci­ty.

Yes­ter­day, PP­BC pres­i­dent Glen­wayne Su­chit said the raids were not new and ini­tial­ly be­gan in Ju­ly and have con­tin­ued since.

He said fol­low­ing di­a­logue with the Chem­istry, Food and Drugs Di­vi­sion (CFDD), the PP­BC had, “been putting out no­tices to phar­ma­cies through­out the coun­try to de­sist from buy­ing any prod­ucts that the CFDD are deem­ing to be un­reg­is­tered or il­le­gal, and in some cas­es, coun­ter­feit and dan­ger­ous drugs.”

Re­fer­ring to the cur­rent per­cep­tion that there were drugs that were un­safe for use that were still be­ing sold to the pub­lic, which he ad­mit­ted had been ham­per­ing busi­ness gen­er­al­ly, Su­chit ex­plained, “There is noth­ing wrong with these drugs. The drugs they are talk­ing about, which the CFDD claim are not reg­is­tered, in­cludes Emer­gen-C, cal­trate, cer­tain brands of Vicks, and cer­tain types of top­i­cal oint­ments that are sold freely over the counter in all first-world coun­tries such as the US, Cana­da, Eu­rope and so on.”

How­ev­er, he blamed the coun­try’s an­ti­quat­ed laws for the is­sue.

“The Phar­ma­cy Board Act was last up­dat­ed in 1962 and try as we have to get the laws changed...noth­ing has been forth­com­ing,” he said.

Knock­ing the red-tape and oth­er set­backs in the process­es for them to im­port phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, he added, “The reg­is­tra­tion process for any in­di­vid­ual or com­pa­ny was prob­a­bly tak­ing a cou­ple years be­cause we didn’t even have a Drug Ad­vi­so­ry Unit at the CFDD for a num­ber of years.”

He claimed that dur­ing the mid-2000s, the Drug Ad­vi­so­ry Unit would meet to re­view any ap­pli­ca­tions for new drugs twice year­ly, fol­low­ing which they would ei­ther ap­prove or re­quest ad­di­tion­al doc­u­men­ta­tion.

He this process got pro­gres­sive­ly worse over the years, Su­chit said, “The process of reg­is­tra­tion de­te­ri­o­rat­ed to be­ing al­most non-ex­is­tent dur­ing a um­ber of years com­ing up to COVID and sub­se­quent to that. Now, it is prob­a­bly very stag­nant.”

Say­ing he was dis­pleased with the man­ner in which the cur­rent raids were be­ing car­ried out, the PP­BC boss said, “The CFDD has the au­thor­i­ty to come in­to our es­tab­lish­ments, pe­ruse and go through and iden­ti­fy and seize any­thing they think that is not reg­is­tered. So they start­ed this dri­ve to clean up the sys­tem in Ju­ly/Au­gust by vis­it­ing phar­ma­cies and in some in­stances, with po­lice of­fi­cers and some with­out po­lice of­fi­cers...no search war­rants, no court or­ders or any­thing, and bla­tant­ly seiz­ing things from peo­ple’s shelves.”

As phar­ma­cy own­ers, Su­chit said when they are ap­proached by phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies of­fer­ing prod­ucts for sale, the onus was not on them to make sure the prod­ucts were reg­is­tered.

“As le­git­i­mate com­pa­nies com­ing to sell us prod­ucts, we would an­tic­i­pate and as­sume that these prod­ucts have been reg­is­tered by the CFDD. How­ev­er, there are loop­holes that can cause these things to arise,” Su­chit said.

As a re­sult, Su­chit said they are now de­mand­ing com­pa­nies pro­vide a cer­tifi­cate of reg­is­tra­tion be­fore mak­ing pur­chas­es.

He added, “The fun­ny thing though...all these prod­ucts...is we have in­voic­es in our pos­ses­sion where they were im­port­ed le­git­i­mate­ly in­to the coun­try, a bro­ker was used, Cus­toms and Food and Drug stamped these doc­u­ments to al­low these things to en­ter and be placed in this ware­house for dis­tri­b­u­tion for sale, and they are the same ones who are now say­ing it is il­le­gal.”

Su­chit ques­tioned, “Why are they not do­ing the cor­rect things at the point of en­try to pre­vent com­pa­nies from bring­ing in these items in­to the coun­try and there is a big ques­tion mark on that be­cause all this can be stopped. If you don’t have the prod­ucts com­ing in­to the coun­try and Cus­toms are do­ing their job ef­fec­tive­ly, you wouldn’t have it end­ing up on the shelves in phar­ma­cies and there would be no need for seizures.”

The PP­BC head said while they felt the seizures were un­pro­fes­sion­al, they are ready and will­ing to en­gage in di­a­logue with the CFDD to get the sit­u­a­tion rec­ti­fied.