The Gujarat State Food and Drug Control Administration (FDCA) is planning to double its testing capacity in the drug laboratory for Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (Ayush) drug samples so as to strictly monitor the drugs sold in the state..

The FDCA has submitted a proposal with the Department of Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (Ayush), seeking Rs 1 crore assistance from the department's central grant-in-aid scheme for strengthening of the state drug laboratories. Plans are to establish more equipments to conduct more tests on the Ayush systems of medicines in the administration's food and drug testing laboratory at Baroda, said H G Koshia, commissioner, FDCA, Gujarat.

"We have submitted the proposal very recently and expect to go ahead with the plan once we get the support from the Department of Ayush. Since we have beefed up our staff strength considerably in the recent past, we would be able to handle more drug sample tests," said Koshia. He added that the plans are to double the sample tests for the Ayush products with the upgradation and modernisation of the existing laboratory facility.

Currently, the drug testing laboratory at Baroda tests almost 200 Ayush drugs per annum while the total drug samples tested is close to 3000 in a year. The state has 656 licensed manufacturing units for Indian Systems of Medicines and another 16 units for Homoeopathy drug production. "We feel that it is time to increase monitoring activities on Ayush as well, as we have continuous upgradation and modernisation process carried out in the allopathic drug testing facility," said Koshia.

The central scheme of Department of Ayush is designed to support state drug testing laboratories keep upgraded and modernised to test the Ayush systems of medicines as part of strengthening of enforcement mechanism to ensure quality of products. According to the official reports, 29 State Drug Testing Laboratories and 44 State Pharmacies of Ayurveda, Siddha, Unani and Homoeopathy have been financially assisted so far by the department.

The FDCA, through a mass recruitment process in the first week of March, 2010, freshly appointed 156 candidates including 95 drug analysts and 20 food analysts summing up a total of 113 scientists in drug testing services and 35 in food testing process for its day-to-day operations.

The expansion of testing capacity along with the recruitment of large number of staff for testing processes is strategically planned to help the administration to strengthen the drug regulatory enforcement and monitoring activities in Gujarat. The FDCA is also planning to set up a new laboratory dedicated for testing quality of medical devices in the premises of its existing drug testing laboratory at Baroda, for which approval from the state government has already been acquired.