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Pharma firms deny spurious drugs

Staff Reporter

Says it is a false propaganda by multinational companies

NEW DELHI: SME Pharma Industry Confederation, representing small and medium pharmaceutical manufacturers in the country, has expressed distress at reports that India accounted for a whopping 35 per cent of the spurious drugs worldwide.

“The statement is baseless and factually incorrect and damages the export potential of the country’s pharmaceutical industry,” said the Confederation. It said the Union government through the offices of the Drug Controller both at the Centre and in States picked up 40,000 to 50,000 samples of drugs every year and only about 3 per cent of the samples were found not up to the prescribed quality standards. Only 0.29 per cent of them were found to be spurious, it added.

Sub-standard drugs were those with minor manufacturing defects such as chipping of the tablets, labelling deficiency or suffering from deterioration because of storage conditions not being maintained as labelled on the medicines.

“This is a false propaganda which had forced the Central government to pick up samples of medicines in an organised manner analysis of which showed that out of 24,000 samples of drugs tested, only 11 were found to be spurious that is a proportion much below the earlier findings of the World Health Organisation,” said Lalit Kumar Jain, senior vice-chairman of SME Pharma Industries Confederation.

Good reputation

“The reputation of Indian drugs in the international market is so good that even the Chinese are resorting to manufacture of medicines with ‘Made in India’ labels,” he added. “Multinational have unleashed this phobia to enhance takeover value.”

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