In recent years, the number of parapharmacies is drastically growing in Tunisia. However, products which are sold there are not controlled because these structures take advantage of vagueness: no specification regulates their activity. Anyone can open a drugstore by paying a 60-dinar license fee (or 30 dollars) to the Ministry of Finance, and the products are not controlled because they are not drug substance.
An online pharmacy which thus deals with drugstores opened to the public continues to sell sunscreens that had been withdrawn from the market in May 2015 following the discovery of counterfeit batches.
Some products that require pharmaceutical advice – such as dietary supplements, skin depigmentation products or medicinal plants – sold there while the presence of a pharmacist on these places of sale is not mandatory.
Some products sold are of dubious origin, and it explains that dangerous health products can be sold, for example, dexamethasone, a strong corticosteroid from Nigeria which had been spotted some times ago on the Tunisian market.
Since 2011, the National Council of the Order of Pharmacists in Tunisia unsuccessfully calls the Department of Health and Trade to regulate the sector.
Some signs mimic the pharmacies’ window to fool the general public.
An advisor to the Minister of Health said that by next year all the products sold in drugstores will be controlled. A health products agency will be created to test medical devices, dermato-cosmetic and nutritional products.
Source: Direct Info