The Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission (IPC) will soon announce formation of a statutory committee to revise and publish national formulary of India (NFI). The IPC has sought Indian Pharmaceutical Association (IPA)'s assistance in this regard and wanted its chairman Dr B Suresh to head the statutory committee, sources said.

Apart from the chairman, the committee will have several experts from the field, sources said. After revising the edition and making it timely in tune with the growth of Indian pharma industry, the Pharmacopoeia Commission wanted to publish the editions on a regular basis, so that it reaches the stakeholders as a book of reference.

The NFI is expected to assist the practitioners on all preparations allowed to be prescribed in the country, with advice on how to choose the most suitable preparation. It would also encourage rational and economic prescribing. Besides, it can be of use to nurses and other health care professionals, apart from being an educational tool for medical and pharmacy students.

In India, the effort to revise and publish the national formulary is being done after a long time. The NFI's last edition came out in 1979. The IPC has already initiated steps to revise and publish the NFI in collaboration with IPA. The IPC is hoping to publish the much-needed document within one year. Modelled after British National Formulary in 1949, the first NFI appeared in 1960. The second edition came out in 1966. But no effort was made after 1979, whereas developed countries like UK publishes the document in every six months and make sure that it reaches the doctors and pharmacists across the country.

Experts are of the view that the restarting the publication of NFI is important especially in view of the fact that the category and doses of various medicines have not been included in the Indian Pharmacopoeia-2007. The various textbooks of pharmacology and medicine prescribe different doses schedule and one is at a loss which should be taken as a correct standard dose. The physicians, the pharmacists and the nurses are equally affected since the physician would not know the standard dose while pharmacists and nurses would not be able to correct the medication errors in doses in the absence of any standard text book.

The inclusion of the category and doses of various medicines in the Indian Pharmacopoeia is necessary as without that, one would not know the standard doses for various medicines being prescribed by the physician, especially in the absence of any alternative standard reference book for the purpose, experts say.