National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) has decided to seek various options as to how to prevent drug companies from the practice of changing the composition of drugs to circumvent the price control.

The NPPA has requested the chemicals ministry to take up the matter with the health ministry and ensure that the power to grant approval for change of composition rests with the office of the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) and not with the state drug controllers. NPPA felt that the problem could easily be handled if the approval system is centralized.

According to sources, the NPPA has requested the department for the preparation of a background paper in order to take up the matter with the ministry of health. The authority feels that the matter has to be raised at a meeting of all state health ministers.

In a separate move, the office of the DCGI has sought details from industry associations on the extent of misbranding that happen in the drug industry. The change in composition, while retaining the brand names is not only against the interests of NPPA, but is also a potential health hazard.

Pharmabiz had recently reported about the increasing trend among pharmaceutical companies to change the composition of their branded drugs with no change in the brand names to escape the ban of irrational combinations and the provisions of the Drug Price Control Order. The report suggested the presence of at least 100 such brands currently available in the market and highlighted instances of Cetrizet-D (Sun Pharma), Ultragin (Wyeth), Dispirin (Rekkit Bencksier), Aspro (Nicholas Piramal), Phosfomin (Sarabhai) Incid'l (Bayer), Zil (Nicholas Piramal), Esgipyrin (Sarabhai Piramal) and Movon (Ipca).