The online selling of medicines, supplies and food supplements needs a physical store to be allowed, health and trade officials said Tuesday.
“Unless you have a license to operate a physical drugstore, you cannot sell online, whether food supplement or essential drugs,” Trade Undersecretary Ruth Castelo said in a Department of Health forum.
“For example, I want to sell my supplies online. I do not have the license to operate. I am violating FDA laws so I cannot do that,” Castelo explained.
For her part, Dr. Melissa Guerrero of the DOH Health Technology Assessment Unit said that drugstores must have trained pharmacists to secure a license to operate from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
This was to avoid possible dangers involved in buying health products from online stores that do not have pharmacists who can properly advise and dispense drugs to consumers, said Guerrero.
Guerrero said the FDA had “criminal sanctions” for those who sell health products online without a facility that meets standards and trained medical professionals.
The DTI has received over 4,000 consumer complaints involving online transactions, including the sale of drugs, as of May 28, Castelo said.
“Thankfully, online platforms cooperate with the DTI when we make these requests,” Castelo said.
“We also issue advisories reminding consumers not to buy medicine online, especially if they see that the seller does not have a license to operate,” she added.
Aside from forwarding such complaints to the FDA, the DTI also requests online platforms like Facebook to remove sellers involved, since unregistered sellers of health products proliferate on Facebook Marketplace.
The FDA, in 2019, ordered online shopping platforms Shopee and Lazada to stop selling medicines online.
