YEREVAN. - Buying medicine from abroad via the Internet is risky and the citizens should know this. Armenia’s Deputy Minister of Healthcare Sergey Khachatryan said the aforementioned in the parliament today, introducing the bill on the new edition of the Law on Medicines.

Two concepts should be separated here. It’s one thing if an Armenia-based pharmacy opens a website so that the buyers can always see the medicines available there. One can also make a purchase via the website but the main requirement of the Healthcare Ministry here is that the medicine should be delivered by no one else but the pharmacy, observing the proper conditions. This requirement is stipulated by the bill.

And, according to the Deputy Minister, it’s a different thing when the issue concerns the purchase of medicines from abroad via the Internet and postal delivery. The Healthcare Ministry discussed the issue for a long time and concluded that it can’t control all the postal parcels of natural persons.  The awareness of the consumer will better work here.

“One should know that if the medicine arrives that way, nobody guarantees the conditions of its transportation. It could have fallen or be subjected to temperature fall. If the conditions of transporting medicines aren’t observed, the drug loses its properties, whether we want this or not. We don’t want to undermine anyone’s business. We are talking about elementary safety,” Khachatryan said.