India’s drug regulator finds 41 drug samples not of standard quality

The ministry said as per routine regulatory surveillance activity the list of NSQ and spurious drugs is being displayed on the CDSCO portal every month.

The salient feature of this month’s NSQ reporting has been the increased participation of States in reporting NSQs to the central database.

Increased reporting of NSQs/spurious identifications from states to central databases will further help in improving the availability of quality medicines in the country and beyond.

This action of identifying NSQ and Spurious medicines is taken on a regular basis in collaboration with state regulators to ensure that these drugs are identified and removed from the market.

A parliamentary panel recently asked the Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP) to take stringent action in a time bound manner for exemplary punishments against spurious and adulterated drugs manufacturing in the country.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Chemicals and Fertilisers in its fifth report on the Demands for Grants of the DoP for the fiscal year 2024-25 said during the years 2015-16 to 2018-19, around 2.3 lakh samples of drugs were tested, out of which 593 were declared as spurious and 9,266 were declared as Not of Standard Quality (NSQ) drugs.

Only 35 convictions were made in all these cases.

The Committee said till December-mid only 5.9 per cent of the total 593 cases relating to spurious or adulterated drugs have been resolved, with the remaining cases at various stages in respective courts.