Apart from strengthening the manpower in the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO), the Union health ministry has identified two more places for setting up sub-zones as part of streamlining the functioning of the regulatory body and monitoring the pharmaceutical industry.

Sub-zonal offices will be set up at Indore and Guwahati. The first office will make the operations more effective in Central India while the office in Guwahati will cater to the industries in the North East region. The offices will be functional within a couple of years as per the plans, sources said.

The CDSCO has, in the recent years, upgraded sub-zonal offices at Hyderabad and Ahmedabad to zonal offices, besides creating new sub-zones at Bangalore, Jammu, Chandigarh and Goa. The CDSCO has now six zonal offices (Mumbai, Ghaziabad, Kolkota, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad) and four sub-zonal offices (Bangalore, Chandigarh, Jammu and Goa).

According to the CDSCO official brief on the initiatives in the recent past, a number of measures were taken up to strengthen the organisation. “The CDSCO was facing an extreme manpower crunch in 2008. The Ministry of Health took initiative to strengthen the manpower to cope with the work load. A total of 216 new posts in the CDSCO were sanctioned in 2008 and 2009. These posts were filled up with the help of UPSC. At present, 119 regular personnel are in position. The strength will rise to 320 after filling up these posts,” it said.

“To meet the needs, the Government also sanctioned the appointment of 250 contractual staff to assist the organisation in coping with the work load at the headquarter as well as zonal offices. It has been further proposed for the creation of 1045 additional posts in the CDSCO on regular basis to strengthen the drug regulatory system,” it said.

According to the information, the CDSCO had a sanctioned strength of 111 posts only in 2008 with 32 drug inspectors. However, only 12 drug inspectors were in position, rest of the posts being vacant. Now the total sanctioned posts are 310 with 169 posts of drug inspectors. In effect, 65 drug inspectors are in posts now and the selection of another 90 has been completed. In 2008, there was no Deputy Drugs Controller whereas the CDSCO has now 14 DDCs, sources explained.