The meeting, under the chairmanship of the health secretary, is scheduled for January 31, a person aware of the matter told ET. The move gains significance as there have been several instances of exported India-manufactured drugs failing to meet quality norms.
Pharma executives have also been asked to share their views regarding ease of doing business, the person cited earlier said, adding that representatives of pharma lobby groups including Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA), IDMA, OPPI, BDMA, HDMA and Assocham have been asked to attend the meeting. The government has intensified risk-based inspections of drug manufacturing units in a bid to improve the quality of locally made medicines.
Earlier, the WHO had said deaths of dozens of children in Gambia from acute kidney injuries in 2023 might be linked to contaminated cough and cold syrups made by Indian manufacturers. A recent parliamentary standing committee report showed that between 2015-16 and 2018-19, out of 230,000 drug samples examined by state drugs controllers, 593 were declared “spurious” and 9,266 were found to be “not of standard quality”. “Apparently, only 35 convictions were made in all these cases, amounting to a meagre 5.9%, it said.
On Friday, health ministry said in a press release that central drugs labs have identified 51 drug samples to be “not of standard quality” (NSQ) and state drugs testing laboratories have identified 84 drug samples as NSQ.
