India moves to weed out sub-standard drugs, as NPPA fixes price

Even as India's national drug pricing regulator NPPA fixed the retail prices of five formulations including those used for the treatment of hypertension, asthma and heart failure, the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO), India's drug regulator, is gearing up to re-inspect manufacturing plants of several pharma majors across the country to ensure that they are complying with stringent quality measures to weed out supplies of substandard drugs in the market, reports The Pharma Letter’s India correspondent.

With India facing repeated scrutiny of its manufacturing facilities for quality issues, the CDSCO is looking to start another phase of risk based inspections across the country to verify Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) compliance.

The CDSCO, which is the national regulatory body in India for pharmaceuticals and medical devices, is considered as an Indian counterpart of the US Food and Drug Administration. It had initiated risk-based inspections in 2016 to weed out supplies of substandard drugs in the market.