Four government healthcare institutions in Himachal Pradesh have acquired GPHF-Minilab, a mini laboratory for identifying counterfeit drugs, as part of an ongoing Indo-German collaborative project on basic health care in the state. The hospitals are DDU Hospital, Shimla, SDH Hospital Palampur, CHC Dhaulakpur Chowk and Zonal Hospital Chamba. This is the second phase of the Basic Healthcare Project. The current project is to continue for another three years.

The support of the government institutions has come as a shot in the arm for German Pharma Health Fund (GPHF), the promoters of GHPF-minilab in developing countries.

Minilabs have been making a slow entry into the Indian markets with few institutions, barring some charitable hospitals, coming forward to install the system. The high cost of the system was another factor for this lack of interest. GPHF sources felt that the installation of the systems in the government hospitals is likely to generate more interest in the labs among healthcare institutions in the country.

The GPHF is an initiative of the research-based pharmaceutical companies in Germany.

Since 1985, the GPHF, a non-profit organisation, has been committed to promoting pilot projects for the improvement of health service in developing countries. The GPHF projects focus on quality control and quality-management activities in the area of drug supply, and on the improvement of basic health care.

The GPHF-minilab consists of some simple and tropics-compatible test methods designed to protect people in developing countries against the - frequently fatal - consequences of taking counterfeited or substandard pharmaceutical drug products. These methods were developed in co-operation with the School of Pharmacy at the University of Bonn and the Department of Tropical Medicine at the Medical Mission Institute in Wuerzburg, Germany.