Indian Drug Manufacturers' Association (IDMA), Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India (OPPI), Indian Pharmaceutical Association (IPA), All India Organisation of Chemists and Druggists (AIOCD) and Pharmaceutical and Allied Manufacturers and Distributors Association Limited (PAMDAL) have jointly formed a steering committee to fight the menace of spurious drugs.

The Committee chaired by Satya Aggarwala of IDMA, would focus only on spurious drugs (the 'drugs' coming to the market either with zero ingredient or with harmful ingredient). It would initiate definite actions to detect the source and supply channels of such drugs entering the market with the help of professional investigation team. In the first phase of operation, the investigation would be concentrated in Delhi, UP, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar.

The newly formed Committee, which is represented by all the industry associations, has seven other members comprises of Yogin Majmudar, president IDMA, Ajit V Dangi, secretary general, OPPI, Dilip G Shah, secretary general, IPA, Dara Patel, secretary general, IDMA, Devinder Pal, president, PAMDAL, Dilip Mehta, former president, AIOCD, J S Shinde, joint secretary, AIOCD.

According to sources, the industry associations would jointly contribute to a corpus fund, which will take care of the investigative and related expenses. The initial fund, which would be raised for the corpus will be decided in the next meeting of the Steering Committee.

The sources also said that, the Committee would work closely with the government constituted Committee on spurious and counterfeit drugs under Mashelkar in terms of sharing information and other useful reports. The committee would also coordinate with Central and State Drug Control Departments.

Formation of the joint committee was mooted in a seminar organized jointly by the industry and trade associations on April 5, 2003 in Mumbai. At the seminar, Dr M Venketeshwarlu, Deputy Drug Controller (India), West Zone, had pointed out the lacunae in the existing drug regulatory system and also suggested certain solutions to overcome the constrains to help preventing the serious problem of spurious and counterfeited drugs. In his suggestions, he had emphasized the need of creating a forum with representatives from all stakeholders for regular interaction on matters relating to counterfeit and spurious drugs and also warned the industry that each manufacturer at periodical intervals have to carry out verification of supply chain and file returns with the FDAs.

At the policy level, Dr Venkateshwarlu suggested that creating a Central Registry for formulations under the brand names and their compositions along with introduction of a strict drug master file concept in licensing drugs for sale in the country would help control the spurious drug manufacturing and trade in a big way.