The health minister of Kerala P K Sreemathi Teacher will lay the foundation stone of the new regional drug testing laboratory, a mega project by the Kerala drugs control department, at Kakkanad in Eranakulam district on September 5.

The state-of-the-art laboratory would be developed over 30 cents of land at a cost of Rs 4.80 crore. The land, near the primary health centre at Kakkanad, was previously owned by the revenue department and was allotted for the purpose of setting up a modern laboratory recently.

The new laboratory, which is expected to be operational within one year, would follow the standards of Good Laboratory Practice as per WHO norms and be equipped with sophisticated instruments and expert staff to check the properties of drugs sold in the market, according to highly placed sources in the DCA Kerala. Instead of chemical method, the new lab will perform all the tests by instrumental method.

Sources said when the proposed laboratory turns operational, a minimum of 10,000 tests of samples could be conducted annually. As of now, the department has only one testing lab at the state capital, which has the capacity to test only 4000 samples.

The state government is procuring drugs for supply to government hospitals through Kerala Medical Services Corporation Limited (KMSCL). But the state drug testing lab has not that much facility to test all the medicines procured by KMSCL on a specified time. So, often the department has to depend on private labs for analytical tests of thousands of samples, sources said.

With the operation of the new lab, the department will have the facility to test the samples of all medicines bought by the government to distribute through hospitals. Besides, the lab could perform microbiological and pharmacological tests on samples of drugs submitted by the manufacturers and samples taken by drug inspectors from market for analysis, said P Satheesh Kumar, the deputy drugs controller.

For the development of the project, the state government has allotted Rs.4 crore and the department of Ayush has given Rs 80 lakhs. In the six storey building,the fifth floor would be used exclusively for the testing of ayurvedic drugs. Along with the construction of the new lab, the government will renovate the existing lab in Thiruvananthapuram, for which the government has set aside special fund in the present budget.

In 1997, the drugs control department had sent proposals for financial aids to central government for two regional labs, one at Kozhikodu and one at Kochi. But due to lack of land in ideal place, the Kozhikodu project was dropped and sanction was given for Kochi project, Satheesh Kumar told Pharmabiz.