Be alert before taking a medicine. The one you are about to pop could be facing a global ban.

Several medicines for pain, fever, constipation, diarrhoea, or depression face a ban in developed countries like the US, EU, Japan and Australia. Even small countries like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal have banned some.

Though allowed for sale by Indian regulatory authorities, the fact that other countries have found their side-effects to be worrisome, and prohibited their sale; implies patients and doctors should be cautious.

Experts say medicines get banned if their side-effects outweigh their benefits.

Every medicine has some side-effects. But once the side-effects prove dangerous, regulatory systems in the developed world impose a ban, says Dr CM Gulhati, editor of monthly index of medical specialities (MIMS), a medical journal for doctors.

Though the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has been talking about executing a prohibition in India on medicines facing a global ban, nothing much seems to have taken shape.

The regulatory authorities here are weak. Unlike those in EU and US, says Dr Gopal Dabade, from the All India Drug Action Network (AIDAN).

Impact on patients Since globally banned medicines are permitted in India, patients tend to suffer most, say doctors. Often doctors are unaware of harmful side-effects, nor the global ban, and end up prescribing such medicines for their patients, says Dr Gulhati.

Then there is this tendency to self-medicate on part of patients that can prove hazardous.

K Raghu, a marketing professional in Basaveswarnagar, has used the medicine nimesulide in the past to relieve himself of fever.

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Your medicine may have been banned globally