Govt officials and regulators in India consult on stopping spurious drugs

A national consultation meeting was held in India this week to build consensus on the methodology needed to study the volume of spurious and substandard drugs prevalent in the country. Participants included key government officials, regulatory bodies and civil society groups.

Expressing grave concern on the conflicting data on sale of spurious drugs in developing countries such as India, the stakeholders stressed the need to develop a common framework under which such drugs can be studied in detail. The meeting took note of the fact that increased used of the internet worldwide was providing an anonymous marketplace for criminal counterfeiters trading and advertising spurious medicine. It was also alleged that a few countries were illegally using brand India to market such drugs overseas in their own interest.

Experts cautioned that, unless checked this could undermine the image and credibility of the pharmaceutical manufacturing companies, especially the small and medium scale companies, who are the biggest contributor to low cost medicines, not only in India but across the world.