Objectives
The aim of the study was to find the compliance of selected pharmacy outlets with nine major provisions of Drugs Act, 1978 and Codes on Sales and Distribution of Drugs, 2014: registering pharmacy outlets, storing and dispensing registered medicines, separately keeping expired medicines, presence of authorized personnel while dispensing, presence of pharmacy registration certificate, renewing annually pharmacy registration certificate, keeping narcotic/psychotropic medicines, updating narcotic/psychotropic medicines record and having sign board of pharmacy outlet.
Methods
Cross‐sectional, observational study of pharmacy outlets was conducted using pretested, semistructured questionnaire and by direct observation in pharmacy outlets of two development regions of Nepal: Central Development Region and Western Development Region for above nine indicators of regulatory provisions. The preliminary data were analysed for descriptive statistics and Mann–Whitney test.
Key findings
Pharmacy outlets failed to comply with the regulatory provisions. Presence of authorized personnel in pharmacy outlets controlled non‐compliances partly only.
Conclusions
Stakeholders should come up with future stringent interventions for curbing such non‐compliances.