New Pharma Marketing Code Notified by Government

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The Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP) recently issued a Uniform Code for Pharmaceutical Marketing Practices (UCPMP) to regulate unethical practices in the pharma industry. The code prohibits companies from organizing workshops abroad for healthcare professionals or offering them hotel stays, expensive cuisine, or monetary grants. 

Additionally, the code states that healthcare professionals or their family members should not be provided gifts for personal benefit, and the supply of free samples to those not qualified to prescribe such a product is also banned.

While pharma companies have been following a code for marketing practices since 2015, it was voluntary. The new code, however, is quasi-statutory and aims to strike a balance between cooperative and coercive compliance, according to DoP secretary Arunish Chawla. 

The five-member committee headed by Vinod Paul recommended the new code after reviewing the previous voluntary guidelines, which have not effectively addressed concerns over the influence of offering gifts to medical professionals.

The new code creates a mechanism of enforcement and oversight. Each pharma association will have to make an ethics committee and a portal linked to the UCPMP portal of the pharma department. The department will have a panel of auditors who will do a risk-based audit of such expenditures.

If a breach of the code is established, the committee can propose to suspend or expel the entity from the association, according to the new code. They can also ask the entity to recover money or items given in violation of the code. Chawla hopes that with the notification of this code, the pharma marketing practices will undergo an ethical transformation, benefiting patients, doctors, and society at large.