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Health ministry to set up mini drug testing lab at Ahmedabad airport
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Shardul Nautiyal, Mumbai
October 15 , 2016
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Health ministry will soon set up a mini drug testing lab at Ahmedabad
airport as a part of its mandate to control exports and imports of
spurious drugs. The lab will be set up at a strategic location in an
area of minimum 3,000 sq ft and will be equipped with analytical
modalities like AAS, GC, HPLC, IR and NIRS among others for effective
detection, analysis and reporting on drug quality.
This will
enhance the capability to analyse and detect spurious, NSQ drugs and
counterfeit medicines which are ready to be exported at the airport in
less than 40 seconds time without any manual intervention, according to a
senior CDSCO official.
As per official sources, two of the
eight mini- labs are also expected to come up at Nhava Sheva at
Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) in Navi Mumbai and Mumbai Airport.
Other five labs would come up at Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Delhi and Chennai.
Estimated to cost around Rs.25
crore for which funds have already have been sanctioned, the mini-lab
at Ahmedabad airport will be manned by a team of nine technical
personnel led by a senior scientific officer. To ensure quality of drugs
supplied to over 200 countries from India, Central Drugs Standard
Control Organization (CDSCO) is also in the process of training its drug
inspectors on Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) and risk based
assessment.
Headed by the Drug Controller General of India
(DCGI), Government is also keen on expanding CDSCO’s capacity by 2020 by
adding a total of 20 mini drug-testing labs at the port offices of the
drug regulator.
Central government has allocated Rs.900
crore for enhancing manpower and capacities of mini labs at port
offices and mobile labs at CDSCO level. A total of additional 1,195
posts were also sanctioned for the upgradation of manpower and labs
under the 12th five year plan.
Currently, there are seven
drug-testing labs in the country in Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad,
Guwahati, Chandigarh and Kasauli and state drugs testing labs at
Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra with an autonomous lab at Indian
Pharmacopoeia Commission (IPC), Ghaziabad for drug testing and analysis.
As
a step forward, CDSCO has already concluded the process of recruiting
147 drug inspectors which will enhance inspections of manufacturing
units in line with current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP).
CDSCO
had in the past started deputing drug inspectors as observers to carry
out joint inspections on an event of inspection from an international
regulator. The exercise done in coordination with state drug regulators
was meant to monitor manufacturing plants on GMPs and equip drug
inspectors on enforcing its compliance across the country. Following
which, around 80 drug inspectors had been recruited at the CDSCO in 2014
In
August 2015, the cabinet committee on economic affairs approved a
proposal to strengthen the country’s drug regulatory system at an
estimated cost of Rs.1,750 crore. The
proposal envisaged the setting up of testing labs and a training academy
for regulatory and drug-testing officials at the central and state
levels. It also envisaged additional manpower for regulatory structures.
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