Pill for sale online without consultation

A BRITISH-based online medical service is offering the contraceptive pill to Irish women without a face- to-face consultation with a doctor.

Women do have to supply their medical history to the DrThom website before getting a private prescription from the website’s doctors and must be over 18.

The service, launched yesterday, intends to prescribe and dispatch medicines to women throughout Ireland, where appropriate. It is offering three months’ supply for about €38.

The website is offering the service to women who say they are already on the pill, rather than those wanting their first prescription.

A woman needs to register and answer a questionnaire which asks about the patient’s health and previous use of the pill.

A patient will be encouraged to visit their GP if the website doctor decides the treatment is unsuitable or the patient needs to be examined.

DrThom’s medical director is Dr Thomas Van Every and his brother Ian is the service’s commercial director. Ian said the service was the first in Britain to be registered with the Healthcare Commission to manage patients remotely.

“We are not trying to replace GPs — we are trying to provide a service to women who, for whatever reason, find it difficult or impossible to see their GP,” said Mr Van Every. “We understand that some doctors will not like our service but we think it is better to make sure that people offering this service are not cowboys and are properly regulated and overseen by experts. We want women to get the contraceptive pill as easily as possible,” he said.

The Irish Medicines Board (IMB) said supply of prescription-only medicinal products through the internet was illegal in Ireland and was referring the matter to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency in Britain.

But Mr Van Every claimed that agency had told them that there was nothing in British health law to prevent DrThom from prescribing the pill to Irish patients and dispatching the product to them.

Dr Niall Ó Cléirigh, a member of the Irish College of General Practitioners, said he would be concerned women using the service would be missing the opportunity of having other health checks.