{"id":1003456,"date":"2026-06-03T21:37:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T21:37:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1003456\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T21:37:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T21:37:16","slug":"compounding-pharmacy-challenges-claims-it-was-illegally-supplying-glp-1-weight-loss-drugs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1003456\/","title":{"rendered":"Compounding pharmacy challenges claims it was illegally supplying GLP-1 weight-loss drugs"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the popularity of GLP-1 medications to treat obesity grows (e.g.Ozempic, Mounjaro), there’s a court battle looming after a local compounding pharmacy challenged the findings of the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority<\/a> (SAHPRA).<\/p>\n

These medicines were originally developed as diabetes treatments but are increasingly used for weight loss around the world.<\/p>\n

RELATED:<\/strong><\/p>\n

As more and more patients in South Africa start taking the drugs, SAHPRA, in collaboration with the South African Pharmacy Council (SAPC), has intensified enforcement action against the unlawful manufacturing and distribution of unregistered GLP-1 and GIP medicines.<\/p>\n

This led to a joint investigation inspection at iDexis, trading as Sentra Pharmacy in Pretoria, in May. The inspection discovered critical regulatory non-compliance and all GIP\/GLP-1 injectable products found on site were seized, SAHPRA said in a statement.<\/p>\n

iDexis denied the claims<\/a>, and said they would be challenged in terms of the prescribed statutory processes in the Medicines Act Promotion of Administrative Justice Act.<\/p>\n

Stephen Grootes talks to Dr Boitumelo Semete-Makokotlela, SAHPRA CEO, about what is a highly technical and complicated case.<\/p>\n

Dr Semete-Makokotlela emphasizes that the act of compounding itself is not illegal, but has to comply with very strict conditions.<\/p>\n

“If a drug is regulated in this country… like these are by Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, and a doctor wants a patient to access this product, but in a formulation that any of the registered ones is not available in, that product can be compounded. Also if there is a shortage or anything to that effect, then a compounding pharmacy can compound on a prescription from a doctor for a specific patient.”<\/p>\n

The objection against iDexis is that drugs were being sold without proper prescriptions, and that serious deficiencies in quality, safety, and regulatory compliance were discovered at the Pretoria facility.<\/p>\n

“We’re not seeing them comply with good cleaning practices, avoiding contamination, etcetera. The other important thing with compounding is that you must demonstrate that there’s a prescription issued by a healthcare professional that warrants why you, as a compounding pharmacy, should make that product. And we didn’t find any of these prescriptions, which is completely against what the Medicines Act and the Pharmacy Council say about the need for compounding.”<\/p>\n

She says SAHPRA was alerted to this noncompliance by several whistle-blowing reports, but also by healthcare professionals saying they’d heard of colleagues’ patients obtaining these products without scripts.<\/p>\n

For more detail, listen to the interview audio at the top of the article<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the popularity of GLP-1 medications to treat obesity grows (e.g.Ozempic, Mounjaro), there’s a court battle looming after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1003457,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4315],"tags":[32732,129970,129971,32733,32734,105,1501,4326,12,5684,129972,32717,32718,16,15],"class_list":["post-1003456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-medication","tag-ewn","tag-ewn-news","tag-ewn-south-africa","tag-eye-witness-news","tag-eyewitness-news","tag-health","tag-latest-news","tag-medication","tag-news","tag-news-today","tag-prime-media-plus","tag-primedia","tag-primedia-plus","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116688338964633537","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1003456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1003456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1003457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1003456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1003456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1003456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}