The Andhra Pradesh Drug Control Administration (DCA) has welcomed the guidelines issued by IDMA on the disposal of date expired drugs. Pointing the relevance of the guideline now, the DCA stated that if the companies strictly follow it, most of the malpractices going on in the trade could be eliminated.

Amidst the growing incidents of drugs being sold after their expiry dates, the Indian Drug Manufacturers Association (IDMA) had issued guidelines to its members on the disposal of date expired drugs. IDMA's guidelines also cover disposal of damaged and rejected medicines so that they would not be sold to the gullible public.

The Drug Control Administration had seized several date expired drugs worth more than Rs 1 lakh in Hyderabad recently. Spurious and damaged drugs are also not to be sold to the patients, as per the Drug Control Act. A spurious drug need not be a duplicate drug. Even a branded drug, if it does not contain the same ingredients as printed on the package, is considered as spurious.

Taking a serious view of date expired drugs and damaged / rejected drugs being recycled by unscrupulous traders, IDMA has evolved a three-tier plan to check the malpractices prevailing across the country.

According to a DCA source, IDMA has asked all its members to intensify measures to destroy all online product rejects at the manufacturing locations. They also have been asked to destroy all redundant packaging materials and also intensify security arrangements for all printed packaging components. In addition, the companies have been asked to ensure that the field sales representatives return all the stocks of date expired samples for destruction to the manufacturing locations.

The IDMA guidelines stipulate that the management should designate an individual under whose supervision the destruction will be done. All the companies should follow the suitable standard prescribed for the destruction procedure. The manufacturing locations should check their records and issue instructions for the return of such stocks duly identified.