The European Directorate for Quality of Medicines (EDQM) is launching an initiative to build a global partnership with the support of different Pharmacopoeia commissions to fight the menace of counterfeit drugs and is also keen to involve India as a partner in the effort.

The EDQM, which publishes the European Pharmacopoeia and is involved in harmonization and coordination of standardization, regulation, quality control of medicines, blood transfusion and organ transplantation in Europe, is setting up a separate and specially-dedicated unit under its directorate to deal with the issue of counterfeiting.

Talking to Pharmabiz, senior EDQM official Dr Claude Coune said they have identified the staff, programme and the unit would be set up this month itself. But it was bit too early to comment on the scope of the programme.

``Our vision is to build a global partnership for arresting the menace through joint investigations and sharing of knowledge between the partners. The countries will have centres of expertise to gather information and share among them. We will also take steps on educational measures, harmonization of legislations and strengthening of laws and enforcements in the partner countries,'' he said.

``The fight against counterfeiting should be as wide as possible. We are pleased to work with India by involving it also as a partner of the proposed network of nations across the world,'' he said, noting that the internet has become one of the major tools for selling counterfeit drugs.

``We already have a formal agreement with Russia in this regard as that country is also facing lots of problems on the counterfeiting area. Activities are slated to start in January and at the moment, it is not clear who all will join the programme. But it has been identified as a major point of action plan for the future,'' Dr Coune said.

He also informed that the EDQM would like to publish the monographs of all herbals imported from the countries like India, Pakistan and China, as large ethnic groups from these countries were using them, especially in United Kingdom. There had been accidents due to the use of these herbals and hence the agency would like to ensure quality of these medicines.

Currently, the work was going on to prepare the monographs of 100 herbals and the monographs of 15 of Chinese herbals were already published to begin with. The agency was keen on the herbals from the countries like India, Africa and South America due to the concerns of impurities, he explained.

According to the World Health Organisation reports, about 7 per cent of global pharma products was counterfeit and it was expected to touch a whopping 75 million dollar by 2010. In India, still a debate is going on about the exact quantum of counterfeit with the industry, public interest groups and the Government quoting different figures.