The newly notified UCPMP prohibits companies from organising workshops abroad for healthcare professionals or offering them hotel stay, expensive cuisine or monetary grants to control unethical practices in the pharma industry.
The government has asked pharma companies to submit an undertaking by June 30. The Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP) has sent out a self-declaration form for FY25 under UCPMP to all pharmaceutical associations for “strict compliance,” said a circular dated May 28.
The self-declaration must be filled and signed by the executive head of the company regarding compliance to the UCPMP for FY25. The format says the company undertakes to comply with the provisions of the UCPMP 2024 and extend all required assistance to authorities for the enforcement of this code.
According to the code notified by DoP in March, no gifts of personal benefit should be offered to healthcare professionals or their family members. It also bans the supply of free samples to those who are not qualified to prescribe such a product. While pharma companies have been following a code for marketing practices since 2015, that was purely voluntary. The new code is quasi-statutory.”This means it strikes the right balance between cooperative and coercive compliance,” DoP secretary Arunish Chawla had earlier told ET.A five-member committee headed by Vinod Paul had recommended the new code after reviewing the previous voluntary guidelines, which have not helped in effectively addressing concerns over the influence of offering gifts to medical professionals.
The new code creates a mechanism of enforcement and oversight. Each of the pharma associations will have to create an ethics committee and a portal linked to the UCPMP portal.
The department will have a panel of auditors who will do a risk-based audit of such expenditure. If a breach of the code is established, the committee can propose to suspend or expel the entity from the association, as per the new code.
