Pharmaceutical sales representatives are unscrupulously screening people in the country in return for prescriptions by doctors for their products, reveals a special report published by the leading medical journal, The BMJ.

The practice is unauthorised and unethical as only a registered medical practitioner can perform screening and diagnostic tests, according to the Medical Council of India.

Free ‘health camps’ for poor people in India have grown popular, writes the report’s author Frederik Joelving, a journalist based in Denmark.

Local residents are invited to the camps that may include medical testing done by drug representatives or technicians, he explains.

Some camps take place at temples or schools near slum areas and tend to attract hundreds of visitors, while smaller ‘patient camps’ can be at a hospital or in the waiting room of a doctor’s office.