Ho Chi Minh City was the first locality to implement the program “Control over drug prescription and the sale of prescription drug in the phrase of 2017-2020” initiated by the Ministry of Health. All drugstores are expected to be connected to the database on March 1.
However, over 1,700 ones have not linked to the system. If these store owners deliberately fail the compliance to the regulation, they will be shut down.
As of April 2, out of 6,300 pharmacies in the city, just 4,700 had already joined the network, accounting for 74 percent of the total drugstores.
According to Phar. Do Van Dung, the program requires drug stores to connect to the national pharmaceutical database. The software allows health officials to monitor origins of medicine, prescription practice and sales of antibiotics.
Through the new software, all pharmacies in the network will be linked to the Ministry of Health and the municipal Department of Health to prevents unknown medicine from entering the system.
