A world-class group of experts from the US and India came together to drive home not only the problems but present innovative solutions to win the war against counterfeiters who are getting more and sophisticated.
Talking at the the “2nd pharmaceutical anti-counterfeiting conference in emerging regions” organised by FDASmart, a US and India based pharmaceutical regulatory compliance and management cum pharmaceutical consulting company, in Mumbai recently, they gave an indepth analysis on how the Indian stakeholders can face the global challenges of drug counterfeiting.
A year ago March 2011, DGFT created a scare in the industry for 2-D barcoding deadlines July 2011 which seemed unrealistic but served as a wake-up call to Indian pharma exports industry.
A lot has occurred in the past year including DGFT extension on the 2d barcoding deadlines, NPPA allowing additional pricing allowance/ increases to help cover new printing technology costs and of course the Avastin scare in the US, i.e. cancer drugs counterfeit as well the US FDA mandate thru Commissioner Margaret Hamburg to seek authority to implement a nation-wide track & trace system for the US pharmaceutical industry.
Hence the theme for the forum was to acknowledge the serious threat of counterfeits and trace a multi-stake holder look at the progress made in winning the battle against counterfeits. Panel discussion at the end of the session involved some provocative discussion which included the audience comments and feedback.
The event was aimed at introducing latest technologies to help manufacturers worldwide in tackling counterfeiting of drugs which has grown in alarming proportions in the developing as well as developed countries.
The US based Cognex Corporations introduced their latest In-Sight 7000 series technology which will help to check the efficacy of drug. “By 2014-15 in US around 50 per cent of drugs should be serialised like high lifestyle drugs to stop counterfeiting of drugs,” said Deepak Kallakuri, product marketing manager, vision systems-Marketing, Cognex.
Jigish Chiniwala, director, Cognot Systems said, “By organising such events, Health Ministry should campaign and bring to the notice of the people about the menace of counterfeiting of drugs especially in developing countries like India, Nigeria etc. Since most of the people are illiterate in these countries various media like TV and radio should be utilised to reach the rural masses. Moreover law and enforcement should be strong if countries to fight against counterfeiting.”
Faguni Jain, regional sales manager, Sproxil said, “Our MPA is a brand protection technology which enables the consumers to verify authenticity of a pharmaceutical product and this service is being provided to several leading global pharmaceutical companies namely GSK, Merck Jhonson & Johnson for their antimalarial drugs, diabetes and fungal infection cream.”
Speakers included various stakeholders in the pharma industry including Abbott Labs Samir Vasavada (Controller-External Manufacturing India), Deepak Kallakuri from Cognex on breakthrough vision and identification technologies.
Dr. Kiran Marthak from Lambda Therapeutics delivered a unique spin on how counterfeits affect clinical trials while Henal Vakharia –Partner at Kocchar (law firm) thoroughly covered legal aspects of the counterfeit problems with solution and case studies while C.P. Shahtry from Pharma Synergies spoke about the multi-stale holder strategies needed to win this war.