Bengaluru: Karnataka recently reached out to private pharmacies and recalled substandard drugs worth Rs 17 lakh. This action followed the food safety and drugs administrative department’s discovery that 164 out of 2,974 drug samples tested were ‘not of standard quality’.
The department of health and family welfare is developing an app-based system to track the location of these drugs within the state, including private setups. This initiative aims to tighten the oversight of drug manufacturers from other states.
Health and family welfare minister Dinesh Gundu Rao told TOI the recall was “from private retailers (pharmacies)”.
“The policy around recall isn’t easy to implement and there has never been a proper recall. We want to have a system in place to make all stakeholders aware of stock availability, how much is lying with chemists, distributors and nursing homes. We don’t have this information,” he said.
To ensure a transparent supply chain, he said, “Information on ‘not of standard’ drugs after testing should be passed down to the stakeholders, so they don’t sell them further and send the stocks back to the distributors and thereby, manufacturers.”
The state is developing a drug recall policy to address the issue. An app is being developed to bring all stakeholders under one roof for easy transmission of information and pinning of accountability, he said.
“We’ve asked the govt of India to do this too, for tackling the issue at a national level. We’ve started work at the state level and will bring out a proposal shortly,” Rao added.
Food safety and drug administration commissioner Srinivas K said states where drugs are manufactured provide licences, followed by the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation. The manufacturers test the drug after manufacturing in their labs or other private labs. When it is ‘standard quality’, it is sent to the market. “We don’t conduct a second test before drugs manufactured in other states come to Karnataka. Only when we do random sampling, as regulators, do we learn about the quality of drugs,” he said.