Made in India

Pushing public health to life-threatening dangers, substandard drugs are flooding the Indian market
Akash Bisht Delhi

Rajinder Man, An Inspector-General with Border Security Force, was fighting a fatal battle against bone cancer. The doctors prescribed an imported drug to help cure the disease. Mani bought four doses of injections from a Delhi-based pharmacy and soon discovered that the medicine provided him no relief. He approached the doctor and all hell broke loose when he was informed that the injections he had bought were spurious. Mani was then asked to buy the drug from its sole legal distributor in India. But, by then, the damage had already been done. Mani had to go for a hip replacement surgery. 

However, after the surgery, Mani approached the consumer court in Delhi. The court ordered the pharmaceutical distributor to cough up Rs 10.5 lakh as damages for aggravating his condition. Mani had a lucky escape, but many others who are unknowingly consuming spurious or substandard medicines in India are dying a slow death. Experts believe that the hullabaloo surrounding the large circulation of fake drugs penetrating Indian markets is exaggerated and basically substandard drugs should be the cause of grave concern. 

Dr CM Gulati, editor, Monthly Index of Medical Specialities, refutes the claim that largescale spurious drugs are penetrating the market. He believes that claims of massive spurious drugs penetration is multinational propaganda, while manufacturing fake drugs is an idiotic proposition. "The high-end technology used for packaging medicines is very expensive and it would not yield any profits. If the manufacturer is not making any profit, why would he consider it? Additionally, there is always the fear of being caught," says Gulati. 
Ravi Kant, Assistant Drug Controller, Drugs Control Department, Delhi, corroborates Gulati's views and calls packaging a costly proposition. Experts believe that the limited mandate to control the menace either at the policy or enforcement level is a cause of worry not only for consumers but also for genuine producers and enforcement agencies. 

Upholding the fact, the data from drug testing laboratories across the country too gives a dismal picture of the quality of medicines being marketed in India. From 2004 to 2009, more than 2,07,142 samples were randomly picked by state-level drug inspectors and it was found that more than 7 per cent were of substandard quality. "This is what the focus of the authorities and media should be rather than unnecessarily claiming that a high percentage of spurious drugs are circulating in the market," says Dr Gulati. 

CBI sources confirmed to Hardnews that many factories that produce legitimate medicines during the day resort to substandard ones during the night. 

A recent report, A Safe Medicines Chest for the World, brought out by the International Policy Network, exposed that a dangerously high 12 per cent of drugs supplied by Delhi pharmacies were substandard, while it was 5 per cent in Chennai. The report read: "While the majority of drugs were of high quality, it's worrying that 80 per cent of the sampled Delhi pharmacies were providing substandard products. In Chennai, the situation was much better, but there remained a 38 per cent chance that the pharmacist (in Chennai) would be doling out substandard medicines."

 The report mentioned that 50 per cent of pharmacists interviewed in Delhi and Chennai revealed that the most popular way of counterfeiting was by repackaging expired drugs. "In Delhi, 7 per cent of samples from intermediary wholesalers were substandard and 80 per cent of the pharmacies sampled were providing at least some substandard products, twice as high as Chennai."