Ethiopia sets fifteen-day prescription checks for controlled medicines

Ethiopia’s replacement medicine law required pharmacies dispensing controlled medicines to check an original prescription issued within the previous fifteen days. Each prescription could cover only one narcotic or psychotropic medicine, and had to identify the prescriber and the institution.

A wider medicine law replaced the earlier controls

The law took effect on 28 February 2019. Its stated purposes included protecting people from unsafe medicines and preventing the illegal distribution and use of narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances and chemicals used to make them.

It replaced the 2010 health-law controls in the matters it covered. Those earlier rules had already required special permits, special prescription paper and secure storage. The replacement set out a detailed sequence of checks for the person writing a prescription and the person dispensing it.

Cannabis fell within the law’s treaty-based definition of narcotic drugs, following Ethiopia’s accession to the Single Convention. The licensed medicine trade remained subject to these general controls.

A prescription had a short life

A licensed medical professional could prescribe controlled medicines only in the health institution where they were authorised to work. They could not prescribe the medicines for themselves.

Narcotic and psychotropic medicines needed their respective special prescription papers. The prescriber had to keep a copy after giving the original to the patient. If a mistake was made, the erroneous sheet had to remain intact in the prescription folder. The folder was to be returned to the national or regional regulator as appropriate.

The prescription lost its validity after fifteen days. Putting more than one controlled medicine on the same paper was prohibited.

The dispenser had to check the paper

An authorised health institution or medicine retailer had to confirm the prescriber’s name and the institution’s stamp, the original document, and writing or printing free of errors. It also had to check the correct type of prescription paper, a readable serial number and the date.

Together, these requirements made the prescription’s identity, age and contents part of the dispensing decision. Holding a written order was only one step in obtaining the medicine through an authorised supplier.

Permits and locked storage continued

Manufacturing, importing or exporting controlled medicines required a special permit. An import or export permit applied to a particular shipment and lasted ninety days. Stocks and their invoices, registers and prescriptions had to stay in a locked cupboard or special room, with the key held by the authorised pharmacy professional.

The law kept Ethiopia’s controlled-drug supply under supervision from the shipment’s permit to the prescription presented at the dispensing counter.^[1][2]