As a wholesale dealer, how should I conduct qualification checks on my customers, such as pharmacies and clinics, to ensure lawful sales?

Under GDP requirements, medicine wholesalers are responsible for ensuring that their products are sold only to entities or individuals with the legal qualifications and authorisation to procure and sell medicines. This is a key “gatekeeper” duty intended to prevent medicines from entering illegal channels. Your customer qualification procedure must be clearly set out in an SOP. Before supplying a new customer for the first time, you must obtain and verify its Business Registration (BR) certificate and relevant licences for dealing in medicines (such as an Authorised Seller of Poisons licence for a pharmacy or a doctor’s practising licence). You must retain copies of these documents and recheck them periodically (for example, annually) to ensure that the qualifications remain valid. For every sales order, you should verify that the recipient is an approved customer.