Medical weight management in Costa Rica: what is actually legal

The short version

Prescribing a weight-loss medicine in Costa Rica is legal. Selling one without a physician, applying one in a place not authorised to apply it, or advertising the injection itself is not. Most of what looks like a grey area is in fact a clear line that somebody has crossed.

Who may prescribe

Any physician registered with the Colegio de Médicos y Cirujanos de Costa Rica may prescribe a registered medicine, including the GLP‑1 medicines used in weight management. There is no separate licence for obesity medicine and no specialist gate. What there is instead is a duty: the prescription has to follow an individual assessment of that patient, and the physician carries the responsibility for it.

Controlled medicines must be prescribed through Receta Digital, the national electronic prescribing system; ordinary prescription medicines, which is what the metabolic medicines are, need a properly signed prescription rather than that particular platform. Either way a prescription can be filled at any pharmacy in the country, which is what makes a virtual clinic workable here in a way it is not in many places.

What the Ministry of Health said in October 2025

On 28 October 2025 the Ministry of Health published a health warning on the promotion and application of injectable weight-loss medicines in nutrition clinics. It named semaglutide, tirzepatide, cagrilintide and liraglutide directly. It is the clearest statement of what the regulator expects, and it reads better as a checklist than as a scolding.

It objects to three things:

• promoting injectable weight-loss programmes on social media
• use without supervision, or use that is excessive, cosmetic, or without proper evaluation
• application by establishments or personnel who are not authorised

And it requires four:

• prescribed only by a physician, after an individual assessment
• administered by a properly accredited medical professional
• valid Costa Rican sanitary registration for the product
• an unbroken cold chain from import to administration

It also says the patient must be told the brand, the active ingredient and the registration number. That is the most useful line in the document for anyone choosing a clinic. If a provider cannot give you all three, you are not being offered a registered medicine.

Compounded medicines, and where the line sits

A second warning, dated 23 July 2026, covers unregistered peptides and names retatrutide, tesamorelin, BPC‑157, TB‑500 and GHK‑Cu. It confirms that magistral preparation — a licensed pharmacy compounding a medicine for one named patient against one prescription — remains legal. What is not legal is manufacturing to hold stock, selling at scale, or advertising the compounded product to the public.

So a compounded preparation is not automatically illegitimate. A compounded preparation offered from a catalogue, with a price list and a photograph, is a different thing entirely.

Six questions that separate the two routes

1. Who is the prescribing physician, and what is their colegio number?
2. Was there an assessment before the medicine was offered, or after?
3. What is the brand, the active ingredient and the sanitary registration number?
4. Where is it dispensed — a licensed pharmacy, or the clinic itself?
5. What is being monitored, and how often?
6. Does the price of the consultation depend on whether you accept the medicine?

A clinic working inside the rules can answer all six without hesitating. The questions are not hostile. They are the ones the Ministry of Health has effectively already asked on your behalf.

What this does not cover

Nothing here is advice about whether a weight-loss medicine is right for you. That is a clinical question, it depends on your own measurements and history, and it is answered by a physician after examining both.