In the new Pharmaceutical Policy draft prepared in January 2005, government had made a significant observation about the present system of brand approvals in the drug industry in the country. The draft said that the system is highly inappropriate with an increasing number of products in the market either having same brand name or some brands sounding very similar. The document also noted with concern the trend in which the composition of a brand is changed by the companies without any change in the brand name. The concern expressed in the document is quite serious as even reputed pharma companies continue to indulge in such practices today. A recent case is that of Novartis India. The company claims to have launched an ayurvedic product, Khatika Churna-Calcium Sandoz@250, in the domestic market some time ago. Although the product contains no calcium, the company seems to be using its decades old Calcium Sandoz brand name as a suffix to push up the new product. The label of the product says it is an 'ayurvedic proprietary medicine' and yet the company is aggressively promoting it through allopathic doctors. If the product is an ayurvedic medicine how does the company justify in adding an allopathic drug brand name to it. And it is surprising how the local FDA approved the brand name with Calcium Sandoz suffix.
Usually medium and small drug units indulge in this unethical practice in small towns to take advantage of the goodwill created by an established brand over a period of time. This practice of pharma companies is confusing and dangerous as physicians can commit prescription errors and pharmacists hand over wrong products to the patients at the counter. It is quite unfortunate that established companies like Novartis also resort to such practices even today. Two well-known cases of misbranding were that of Disprin Plus of Reckitt Benckiser and Aspro Plus of Nicholas Piramal in 2003. Disprin and Aspro have been well known aspirin brands in the Indian domestic market for a long time. With a sharp cut in the price of aspirin by NPPA in early 2001, both the companies discontinued their products but did not give up their brand names. The companies, thus, launched Disprin Plus and Aspro Plus with paracetamol as the only ingredient. These companies had thus placed lives of several patients at risk as most of them cannot be expected to comprehend the total change of ingredient in the brand. In the absence of an effective coordination and control in granting product licences, India is already having over a lakh of brands for about 500 drugs marketed in the country. Central health authorities have no idea about what is the actual number of brands floating in the market and their composition. There is also no record with the government how many drug products are in the market with same brand names or similar sounding names and brands with changed compositions. These companies holding the same brand name even after changing the main ingredients or compositions must be directed to change the brand name to avoid misleading the public and healthcare professionals.