The General Pharmaceutical Council (GPhC) is “taking action” against numerous online pharmacies for prescribing weight loss drugs to patients “without full and appropriate checks being carried out”.
It comes as an ITV News report revealed today (January 5) that patients with “healthy BMIs” are using AI to fake their weight and access weight loss injections.
By using “basic editing software” to “widen their waist, face and body”, the reporter was “approved” by three different companies and had three separate weight loss injection prescriptions sent to them “within a week”, the article said.
Read more: GPhC ‘really sorry’ after anorexia patients access weight loss jabs
The broadcaster also spoke to three women who had “been accepted” for these prescriptions in the same way, “sometimes with only a single edited image”.
The GPhC told ITV, however, that “having one photo by itself is not going to be sufficient”.
“It’s really important that people have access to the medicines they need and when they need them - but only when it’s safe and appropriate,” it stressed.
“Protect the public”
GPhC chief pharmacy officer Roz Gittins said in a statement issued today that the regulator has “followed up on the findings” from the report and has “inspected all three of these pharmacies”.
“Two were not meeting all of our standards, and one remains under investigation,” she said, adding that the GPhC is “taking action” to “protect the public” and to ensure the pharmacies “make improvements to meet standards”.
Gittins also explained that when pharmacies are found not to be meeting the regulator’s standards, it takes “appropriate action” against them, as well as considering “taking action against the pharmacists and pharmacy technicians involved”.
Read more: Weight loss: GPhC online pharmacy crackdown has ‘full’ DH support
It comes after the GPhC issued new guidance last February, setting out that online pharmacies “cannot” prescribe based on online questionnaires alone and must “independently verify” patients’ weight and height before prescribing weight loss drugs.
But the Pharmacists’ Defence Association (PDA) warned at the time that the rules do “not go far enough to protect patients”.
And C+D revealed in March that the regulator received almost 50 concerns relating to weight management in just the first month of its updated guidance.
