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Check entry of fake drugs, court tells State

CUTTACK: Observing that “Orissa has become a dumping ground of fake medicines” the Orissa High Court has asked the State Government to check entry of fake drugs into the State from outside.

“Deploy drugs inspectors at inter-State check gates, upgrade the State drug testing laboratory and conduct regular checks on the drug manufacturing units and cancel the licences of fake drug manufacturers,” said a division bench of the High Court to the State Government in view of wide scale allegations that fake drugs are rampantly available in Orissa markets.

Adjudicating over the PIL filed in connection with spurious saline case of 2000, the division bench of Chief Justice A K Gangly and Justice Indrajit Mohanty on Thursday said that the State had now become the dumping ground of fake medicines.

The HC is now constantly monitoring the case in which five persons, including two newborns died in SCB Medical College and Hospital about seven years ago allegedly due to spurious saline administered on them.

The State Drug Controller and the State EPM Director were asked by the HC last month to conduct regular raids on medicine manufacturing units, depots and chemists’ shops.

When the state drugs controller K C Mishra told the court that fake drugs from outside the state are flooding the local markets, the bench immediately directed the State Government to deploy drug inspectors at the four inter-State gates to put a check on entry of fake drugs into the State.

When told that the State drug-testing laboratory in Bhubaneswar is ill-equipped to test the quality of some rare and costly medicines, the court asked the State Government to immediately upgrade the testing laboratory and make arrangements to test the quality of all the available drugs in the State itself.

The High Court also told the drugs controller to continue raids on the drugs manufacturing units in the state.

In yet another direction, the HC asked the drugs controller to continue raids and initiate criminal proceedings against the defaulters or drugs manufactures that have not obtained the requisite licences.

Several units located in the western districts were raided in last one month, the drugs controller told the court.

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