The Union Health Ministry has given its in-principle approval for the modernisation of the Central Indian Pharmacopoeia Laboratory of Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission (IPC) at an estimated cost of Rs 50-crore. A decision to this effect was taken at the governing body meeting of the IPC which held recently under the chairmanship of secretary, Union Health Ministry.

According to sources, the 13-member governing body agreed to provide funds for the modernisation of the laboratory to make it a world class state-of-the-art institution in due course of time on par with its counterparts in the developed countries. Besides, the governing body gave its nod for upgrading the infrastructure of the IPC with world class facilities and for providing additional manpower for the improvement of overall quality of the functioning of the IPC.

The governing body also reviewed the progress of the sixth edition of the Indian pharmacopoeia for which the IPC is giving final touches. The governing body, which includes senior government officials including additional secretary finance, additional secretary health, chairman of scientific body of IPC, secretary IPC, etc expressed overall satisfaction over the progress of the sixth edition of the Indian pharmacopoeia which will incorporate around 300 new monographs on different therapeutic groups representing anti-malarial, anti-tuberculosis, anti-retroviral and biological drugs, sources said.

The Central Indian Pharmacopoeia Laboratory of the IPC located at Ghaziabad near Delhi exclusively carries out the regulatory tests, new drug tests from the DCGI, and other tests related to the IPC for preparing the standard setting documents such as Indian Pharmacopoeia. Its functions also include, to draw up standards and analytical specifications for monographs to be incorporated in the Indian Pharmacopoeia and to carry out the work pertaining to the National Formulary of India.

Earlier, IPC laboratory was used for testing the drug samples from the state drug inspectors, survey samples from CDSCO and port officers in the Northern States. But, in order to focus on the more important work of preparing the Indian Pharmacopoeia, such works were left to the Regional Drug Testing Laboratory at Chandigarh.