Over a month and a half has elapsed but the health secretary has not issued any circular asking doctors to write prescription in block letters or provide printed prescriptions in compliance with a High Court order issued on January 9.

However, Bangladesh Medical and Dental Council (BMDC) in the third week of February issued a circular asking doctors to write prescription in block letters or provide printed prescriptions in compliance with the High Court order.

The doctors, in the meantime, continue to write the prescriptions the illegible way they have long been doing.

Secretary of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and registrar of the BMDC were asked to issue a circular in 30 days and submit a report to the court in six weeks after complying with its directive.

The order came after a writ petition against the backdrop that sloppy handwritings of doctors in prescriptions have been bearing serious risks of drug retailers providing wrong medicines to patients.

Drug retailers said they reject around 20 percent prescriptions, failing to understand what the doctors have prescribed.

“This creates a real problem for us and the patients,” said Sumon Mia, owner of a pharmacy on Indira Road.

Prof ABM Faroque at the department of pharmaceutical technology of Dhaka University said there are some 150 drugs in Bangladesh with names close to one another. “If the handwriting is not clear, the dispenser might make mistakes.”

For example, Inderal is a drug for high blood pressure, while almost similarly Incidal is an anti-allergic drug.

“If the retailer provides Incidal instead of Inderal, the high blood pressure is not going to normalise. This may lead to dangerous consequences,” said Faroque.

Contacted, Health Secretary Sirajul Islam told The Daily Star that they asked the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) yesterday to issue the circular in this regard.

Prof Abul Kalam Azad, director general of the DGHS, told The Daily Star over the phone last night that they would issue the circular soon.

Manzill Murshid, the lawyer for the petitioner and also president of Human Rights and Peace for Bangladesh, said respondents could wait for the court order in the cases where the authorities need to know details of the order. Short orders, like this one, should be complied with fast since it was published in the media.

Therefore, the order should have been complied with by February 9. “Waiting for the order to reach their offices and then acting on it is an old mentality,” said Manzill.

The fact remains that authorities appear to work in a comfort zone, while doctors continue to write the way they have been, leaving the patients at risk.