On January 20, 2021, Exempt Resolution No. 24, dated January 12, 2021, was published in the Official Gazette, which establishes measures to facilitate the acquisition of medicines in the context of a health alert due to an epidemic or pandemic, in accordance with Article 1 of Law No. 21,267.

In this regard, it states that the prescriptions that have been issued since August 8, 2019 will be valid for dispensing in any establishment until August 8, 2021 or until six months after the end of the alert, in case it is extended.

Likewise, it determines that pharmaceutical products may be dispensed by any establishment authorized to do so, showing a copy of the prescription that prescribes them, either in digital or physical format.

However, in the case of the delivery of medicines in which copies of prescriptions in digital or physical format are used, which include products subject to legal control by means of a withheld prescription or check, prior to the delivery of the products, they must be validated in the electronic system of the Ministry of Health, called “System for the Validation of Graphic Prescriptions”, which will be applicable to non-assistance establishments that sell medicines directly.

It also establishes a series of responsibilities to which the prescriber of the digitalized prescription will be subject, among them, to incorporate into the electronic system the respective medical prescription together with eliminating those prescriptions issued that do not correspond to check prescriptions, having to render them unusable and destroy them.

Finally, the malicious use of prescriptions presented in digitalized form or physical copy, including the falsification or adulteration by modification of the indications of the document or its use in the repeated acquisition and in unjustified quantities with respect to the prescription, will be sanctioned according to Book X of the Sanitary Code and the Penal Code.

In case you require additional information on this matter, please contact: Andrea Abascal (aabascal@jdf.cl) and/or Rocío Vergara (rvergara@jdf.cl).