Cabinet okays draft law banning sale of antibiotics without prescription

The cabinet today gave the final approval to the draft of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 2023 banning the sale of antibiotic drugs without a prescription from a registered doctor.

The approval came from the weekly cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at her office.

"As per the draft law, the antibiotic drugs can't be sold without the prescription of any registered doctor and it'll be a punishable offence," said Cabinet Secretary Md Mahbub Hossain while briefing reporters at the secretariat after the meeting.

He said if the antibiotic drug is sold without the prescription, the shopper will be fined Tk 20,000.

The cabinet secretary said the matters of monitoring and controlling the use of antibiotics were included in the proposed law as prevention of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has now emerged as a big challenge.

Now there are two drug laws, which are the Drugs Act, 1940 and Drugs (Control) Ordinance, 1982.

But the two laws focused only on drug issues, not cosmetics. "In the proposed law, the cosmetics issue has been included," said Mahbub.

In the proposed law, some 30 types of offences were cited and the maximum punishment would be life-term imprisonment for several offences like the production of fake and adulterated drugs as well as creating an artificial crisis of drugs, he said.