Health ministry’s ambitious project of setting up mini-drug testing labs at Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Delhi and Chennai is getting delayed despite the fact that the ministry has already appointed an agency for the same and awarded it a contract to procure the equipment.
Till date, only 40% procurement of equipment for each of the labs has been done in an erratic manner. In most of the cases, HPLC has been procured but other high end equipment are taking a long time to procure for reasons unknown. In Chennai and Delhi, space and other issues are still being sorted out, explained an official associated with the development.
As per official sources, three of the eight mini- labs were expected to start this year at Nhava Sheva at Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) in Navi Mumbai, Mumbai Airport and Ahmedabad Airport as a part of its mandate to control exports and imports of spurious drugs but many equipment are still at the procurement stage.
According to the plan, labs will be equipped with advanced analytical modalities like AAS, GC, HPLC, IR and NIRS among others for effective detection, analysis and reporting on drug quality. This is aimed at enhancing the capability for analysis and detection of spurious, NSQ and counterfeit medicines in less than 40 seconds time for exports at the airport without any manual intervention, according to a senior CDSCO official.
Estimated to cost around Rs.25 crore for which funds have already been sanctioned, the mini-labs will be manned by a team of nine technical personnel led by a senior scientific officer. Government is also planning to expand 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 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.
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.