Around 50,000 chemists across the state and 60 per cent in the city downed their shutters today.
Chemists were against the FDA's new rule, under which patients would have to get new prescriptions every time they visit a chemist's shop to purchase regularly used medicines, even for those drugs to be taken for life-time diseases like asthma, blood pressure, diabetes and arthritis.
The FDA had asked chemists to sell medicines on prescriptions that fall under schedules prescribed by the Centre.
Patients would have to get prescription only from qualified allopathic doctors to get allopathic medicines, chemists claim.
Patients from slums and interior areas would suffer the most as there are hardly any allopathic doctors practising in these areas, the association had said.
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