Under immense pressure from the World Health Organisation (WHO) to streamline the entire drug administration system in the country, the Union health ministry has embarked upon a series of training programme for its officials in Canada and US to improve the system on the lines of advanced countries like Canada, US and Europe.

After sending a team of senior health ministry officials including joint secretary in the health ministry Devashish Panda and Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) Dr Surinder Singh to US and Canada recently, another team of second rung officials have been sent to Canada to study drug regulatory system in the advanced countries. The team include drug inspectors, additional drug inspectors, technical officers, lab technicians and others.

The union health ministry's efforts in this regard comes in the wake of the serious criticism from the WHO which had in fact warned the Indian authorities of de-recognising India's national regulatory authority. It found serious lacunae in the functioning of the drug regulatory system in India. A WHO team, which minutely assessed the present drug regulatory mechanism in the county some months ago, had found that the Indian drug regulatory authority is not independent and is functioning under pressure.

Taking serious note of the loose regulatory mechanism in the country, the WHO had asked the Indian health ministry officials to undergo training in an advanced country to understand how the regulatory system is working in the developed countries.

Earlier in April this year, an Indian health ministry team, which include Dr Surinder Singh and Devashish Panda, had a week long training tour to Canada to study the regulatory system in Canada, especially the new drug review procedure and new drug approval for adopting this advanced system in Indian scenario. After that in June this year, these officials were sent for another 10-day tour to the US to study the functioning of the US FDA (US Food and Drugs Administration) to streamline the Indian drug regulatory system on the lines of US FDA.

With India becoming a major happening place in the world pharmaceutical map, especially in the areas of contract manufacturing and clinical trials, there is an urgent need to improve the working of the drug authorities in the country to match with that of the international standards. Ever since taking over charge, the new DCGI Dr Surinder Singh has been trying to improve the working of the DCGI office. The DCGI office, which has recently been shifted to a new state-of-the-art building near ITO in New Delhi matching with that of US FDA office, is now focusing on the improvement of the style of functioning.