The seminar on spurious drugs organized by Indian Drug Manufacturers' Association in Mumbai last week is yet another industry initiative to keep the issue alive as the solutions are still elusive. OPPI had a seminar on the subject a few months ago. National industry forums like CII and FICCI have also been organizing conferences on this topic of late. While discussions and debates are good to create and spread awareness about the dangers of spurious drugs, no concrete action plan has emerged to combat the menace on a national level. Pharmaceutical companies are more concerned about shrinkage of sales of their products due to spurious drugs or counterfeiting of their brands. They primarily want a solution to this. As one of India's eminent scientists pointed out at the IDMA seminar, the concern of all these conferences is more about the business loss to the members of the industry. He was right when he said that the healthcare industry has become totally insensitive to the problems of the patients world over. Profiteering in essential drugs and a growing disregard for ethics in business development is no more restricted to Indian companies but are practised internationally by multinationals and local companies today. In short, one can say that the problem of spurious drugs is a joint creation of pharmaceutical industry, trade and the medical profession.

Before trying to find a solution to this menace, it is only logical to understand the magnitude of the problem and properly analyze the causes for it.Here, one should admit that no organization including the government has any authentic data of spurious drugs in hand today. All percentages floating around are with no scientific basis or validation. No attempt has been ever made to assess and quantify the production and sales of spurious drugs in India. The Centre has now decided to undertake a national survey of spurious drugs. The work is to start in a few weeks from now. This survey should hopefully complete in a few months. Two key areasthe study needs to seriously look at. First is the dispensing counters throughout the country. Large quantities of spurious drugs are being routed through practising medical doctors. Medical practitioners are exempted from obtaining a license for selling medicines to patients under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act. No inspections are, therefore, carried out by the drug control authorities in the premises of the doctors in most states. With the recent spurt of raids of medical stores in many states, peddlers of spurious drugs have thus started targeting more on doctors for their business development. On the supply side, contract manufacturers have emerged as a new source where from fake and counterfeit products are increasingly coming out and the number of such manufacturers is also going up.