The Union Health Ministry's ambitious nationwide survey to get an authentic estimate of spurious drugs in the country found no significant amount of spurious drugs in the pharmaceutical market. Among the 24,000 samples collected by the government for the survey, only around 10 were found to be spurious, it is reliably learnt.

Though the eagerly awaited result of the survey, the largest study of the sort in the world, is yet to be officially announced by the government, the result of the survey may put at rest speculations of business associations like Assocham and some vested international groups about the huge presence of fake drugs in the country. Senior officials in the ministry said that the results will be announced in the first week of September.

This is for the first time a survey of this magnitude was conducted in the country, which was the brainchild of former Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) Dr M Venkateshwarlu. So far India has no government data gathered through official survey on the quantum of spurious drugs. The union health ministry has been quoting the findings of a WHO-sponsored study, held by SEARPharm, which found that only 0.3 per cent of drugs were spurious. That survey also just covered over 10,000 samples. The official tests held in the government labs during the last five years also put the quantum between 0.3 to 0.4 per cent.

Though Dr D Roy, deputy drugs controller (I), CDSCO (South Zone), who is coordinating the survey, refused to divulge the details about the results, sources in the ministry said that the east zone tops the list in the number of spurious drugs with around 7 samples found to be spurious among the 7000 samples it had collected for the survey in the zone which includes the states of West Bengal, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Orissa, Sikkim, Tripura and Andaman & Nicobar Islands.

In the north zone, only two of the around 4500 samples were found to be spurious while only one of the around 5,500 samples were found to be spurious in the west zone. Almost similar is the results in the south zone also, sources said.

After an initial hiccup, the survey was begun late last year and the government collected around 24,000 drug samples from different therapeutic categories and from five different strata of the country like metro cities, big cities, districts headquarters, talukas and villages.

Samples of 62 popular drug brands from nine therapeutic categories were collected in the survey. They include anti-tuberculosis medications, anti-allergics, drugs to counter diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, anti-infective steroids, anti-malarials, NSAIDs, anti-histaminic and multi-vitamin preparations. The collected samples were sent to the original manufacturers to verify whether the products were original or counterfeited. After verification, the doubtful products were sent for further testing, sources said.