Multiplicity of brands in pharmaceutical industry has been a matter of concern for the regulatory authorities in the country for some time as they often lead to confusion and prescription errors amongst the medical practitioners. Although the practice of using same brand name for a particular pharmaceutical product by different companies is rather rare, pharma companies do use variants of an established brand name to confuse the practitioners and patients. Usually medium and small drug units are found to indulge in this unethical practice in small towns to take advantage of the goodwill created by an established brand over a period of time. Misbranding is another unethical practice amongst the pharma companies. It is a dubious way of exploiting an established brand name for a totally different product. Two cases of misbranding that occurred some years ago were that of Disprin Plus of Reckitt Benckiser and Aspro Plus of Nicholas Piramal. Disprin and Aspro were two old and well established aspirin brands in Indian pharmaceutical market belonging to these companies. They discontinued these products but launched Disprin Plus and Aspro Plus with paracetamol as the main ingredient to take advantage of the brand equity of Dispirin and Aspro. Such cases of misbranding can endanger lives of patients as most of them may not check the change of the ingredient in a product.
The need to bring some control in the misuse of brands in pharmaceutical industry has been long felt by the authorities but no effective action was ever taken by the health ministry or the chemicals ministry so far. The Supreme Court had issued an order around 10 years ago directing the government to develop a proper registration system for drug brands in coordination with drug regulatory authorities and the trademark office to prevent the confusion. But, nothing has been done by the concerned ministries after the order. Now last week, a leading financial daily reported that the government had held preliminary discussions over the issue with a few industry stakeholders. What is to be first realized is that the Indian pharmaceutical market has nearly one lakh brands although drugs approved for marketing are around 600. This is too large a number. The number of brands must be multiplying every day as the product licenses are being issued drug control authorities in 28 states with no coordination. The Central government has no idea about what is the actual number of brands floating in the market and their compositions. Ideally a proper audit of pharmaceutical products circulating in the market should be undertaken first and then take steps to weed out undesirable brands from the market. This may not be an easy task but needs to be done. Establishing a centralized database of brands and streamlining the issue of brands can then be done with proper coordination and support of state drug authorities.