No more drug export license without verification

“Very soon,a physical verification will be conducted of the drug manufacturing company who wish to procure a drug exporting license from India. Only after this exercise,the license will be issued,” he told mediapersons.

Moreover,to safeguard the interest of the general public and pharma industry in the country,a proposal has been made to have 2D bar code and unique randomly generated numeric code (UID) mandatory on every drug strip. Once approved,India will join Italy,Malaysia and the European Union to make 2D bar code and UID mandatory in an effort to curb spurious and counterfeit drugs,he added.

“Once approved,every strip of drug bought in India will have both the 2D bar code and an UID. It will destroy the spurious or counterfeit drugs market and assure consumers of the quality of medicines they buy. In most countries,bar coding is voluntary.”

This way,one will be able to find out whether the drug one has bought from a pharmacy is original or counterfeit/spurious through a single SMS. The Drug Consultative Committee (DCC) — in its last meeting on February 15 — had approved a proposal by which every strip of medicine available in India must have a 2D bar code and an UID. A phone number will be mentioned above the bar code,to which the consumer can SMS the UID. A message will tell the consumer whether the drug is original.

The DCC’s recommendation will now be sent to the Drug Technical Advisory Board. The final notification will come from the Union Health Ministry.

The DGCI is also mulling changes to make clinical trials more transparent and will closely monitor it.

“Medical colleges across the country will be roped in to monitor the adverse drug reactions due to clinical trials,” said Singh. For this purpose,services of the nationwide network of National Pharmacovigilance Advisory Committee and pharmaco vigilance data systems will be used to study the adverse effects of drugs.