Cracking Down on Spurious Drugs: Union Health Ministry directs States to create Intelligence Cells with CDSCO

These intelligence cells will work in coordination with the officers of state drug departments and the Central Drug Control Standard Organisation (CDCSO) to unearth the illegal activities of spurious drugs and their manufacturing units.

New Delhi: With an aim to check illegal practices of manufacturing spurious drugs, the Health Ministry has directed states to create intelligence cells to expose and bust such rackets.

These intelligence cells will work in coordination with the officers of state drug departments and the Central Drug Control Standard Organisation (CDCSO) to unearth the illegal activities of spurious drugs and their manufacturing units.

The intelligence cells will also look for any contravention of the Drug and Cosmetic Act.

The health ministry has sought all state drug controllers to strictly monitor the implementation of the intelligence cells under the Act. These directions were given at the third Annual Regulators Conclave for Central and State Regulatory Authorities recently held in Goa.

"Already some states like Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Goa and Delhi have their respective intelligence cells and they are doing good. The intelligence cells will create more surveillance. This will also help in sampling to ensure quality issues of drugs and pharmaceuticals. Also, it will help the department by infrastructure and manpower," a senior drug controller told on condition of anonymity.

"The intelligence cells will conduct surprise raids and inspections. They will keep a strict vigil on habitual offenders. They will also make out a planned strategy with focused modus operandi. The intelligence cells will generate a database to capture historical background and incidences," the official said.

Informing about one such racket of spurious drugs that was unearthed by the Delhi Drugs Control Department, the official said, "In Delhi, huge stocks of ointments of leading brands namely Betnovate-C, Betnovate-N, and Panderm ++ were recently recovered from Bawana area. The estimated cost of recovered goods is stated to be approximately Rs 1.4 crore."

When contacted, Atul Nasa, who is Head of Office/Controlling and Licensing Authority in Delhi said, "It was a challenging task taken by the officers of drug control department by exposing the racket of manufacturing of spurious and counterfeit medicines of multinational brands."

"Our drug inspectors had also collected the samples of all three drugs from the spot for analysis to ascertain the quality of drugs and to verify their genuineness. GSK company has now verified that it is a spurious sample and not manufactured by the parent company," Nasa added.

By Priyanka Sharma

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