South African Backdown Over Drug Reforms

South African Health Minister Nkosazana Zuma has bowed to public pressure, and a court challenge from SmithKline Beecham (Marketletter October 7), by withdrawing radical plans to curb doctors' drug dispensing rights and make generic prescribing mandatory.

Just hours before the court deadline expired on October 17, the State Attorney's Office confirmed that it had been instructed by the Health Department to settle its legal dispute with SB on the grounds that the regulations had been withdrawn. The instruction to settle was followed by a Health Ministry statement announcing that the regulations would be withdrawn and redrafted to take into account some of the over 300 submissions which had been received. SB, which was threatened with being put out of business in South Africa if it did not drop its action against the Minister, had asked the Supreme Court of Transvaal to declare the regulations ultra vires and void.

The regulations would have affected some 6,000 registered dispensing doctors and about three million patients. They would have required doctors to be licensed every year and to pass dispensing examinations, prevented them from dispensing if there was a pharmacy nearby (the distance was not stipulated), and made provision for more stringent control over storage and labeling of medicines. The doctors responded by forming a coalition called the National Convention on Dispensing to protect their rights, and condemned the "punitive" proposals, claiming that they would be counterproductive and drive up the costs of medicine for the poorest sectors of the community.