The Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission (IPC) is on the process of setting up its secretariat at New Delhi to speed up its works in co-ordination with the office of the Union ministry of health and the national drug regulatory mechanism.

The commission is planning to recruit a secretary at the proposed office of Central Drug Authority (CDA) for better updating of drug standards and its regulation with the support of the drug regulatory authority. The office, in the capital city, will also help the commission to carry out proper follow up for the official documents with the ministry of health, according to official sources.

"As per the plan, we will have our secretariat at Delhi within the next two to three months," said a senior official from IPC. Currently the commission has its office at Ghaziabad, 20 kilometres from New Delhi, along with the Central Indian Pharmacopoeia Laboratory (CIPL).

The move is expected to accelerate IPC to speed up the process of preparation, certification and distribution of IP Reference Standards for related substances, impurities and degradation products. With this IPC will also able to give special attention to the methods of manufacture used by the indigenous industry in selecting the pharmacopoeial tests for monitoring the toxic impurities of the concerned drug.

The commission, which released the pharmacopoeia edition for 2007 on December today at Ghaziabad, is also engaged in the process of preparing the addendum for the latest edition. The new addendum, which will bring in adequate changes in the IP 2007, will be published in 2008. The commission has invited suggestions from the pharmaceutical industry on the newly added monographs and policies in the latest edition. However, sources from the scientific committee of IPC commented that the response from the industry was very poor for the new edition and the Commission is expected to bring in more changes for the standards in the addendum.