The SME Pharma Industries Confederation (SPIC), an apex body of small pharma companies spread across the country, will provide technology and guidance free of cost to its members involved in formulation drugs. Besides, guidance will also be provided for adoption of low cost techniques in quality assurance and technology would be made available for formulations hitherto not manufactured by members owing to lack of technique. In this connection, the SPIC will make a list of technologies soon.

These decisions were taken at the governing body meeting of the SPIC on April 18 in Delhi. The decision to provide technology and guidance free of cost to its members involved in formulation drugs was prompted by widespread demand from members. The decision may prove to be a boon to the SPIC members, numbering around 1000 in different parts of the country, as dependable services in this aspect are not available anywhere in the country at present, SPIC secretary general Jagdeep Singh said.

He said that senior SPIC office-bearers and members who are in the field for several decades have decided to chip in their expertise to facilitate the service.

Singh said that there was sharp criticism about the Drugs Act Amendment Bill 2008 in the general body meeting in view of the fact that there are no cold chains to maintain stability and potency of drugs as 80 per cent of drugs carry storage stipulations of 25 Celsius. Vaccines and Vitamins are hypersensitive to heat. Their fate in transportation and godown storage for months during summers can be a cause of worry as imprisonment has been enhanced to 10 years and fine to Rs 10 lakh for spurious drugs. While doing so government has not even made arrangement for providing Reference Standards to its own laboratories which test 40,000 samples annually in the country which means there is no benchmarking available for manufacturers either. For this reason the reports of government laboratories never tally with each other. The delay in legalizing the guidelines was also regretted in the meeting.

Singh also informed that the governing body of the SPIC has unanimously expelled vice-chairman Lalit Kumar Jain for the embezzlement of SPIC property and anti-SPIC activity. He has been replaced by G D Chhibber as vice-chairman, he said.

Meanwhile, making counter-allegations, Lalit Kumar Jain said, “We have, therefore, decided to continue to run SPIC GB, without Sh. Rohan Hedge, Jagdeep Singh, Vinod Gupta and P S Bhatnagar as originally mooted to the expectations of the members as per law.”