Estimated to cost Rs.45 crore, the drug testing lab at Vadodara in Gujarat which is country’s oldest and largest lab is going to be upgraded in a phased manner to augment its capacity, according to officials associated with the development.
Along with getting a facelift, the lab is going to be strengthened with latest equipment for testing drugs in a period of two to three years with 75% financial support from the Centre and 25% financial support from the state government. This will increase the capacity of testing samples from around 13,000 samples to around 26,000 approximately in a month's time.
The project which is worth Rs.45 crore is likely to test the highest number of samples in the country in the coming future, according to a senior official associated with the development.
Not only this, Vadodara based drug testing lab is credited to have tested the maximum number of 6,025 drug samples as part of a pan India spurious drugs survey which concluded last year to assess for the first time complete testing of not-of- standard quality (NSQ) drugs as per Indian pharmacopoeia and other pharmacopoeias.
The national drugs survey was done in collaboration with Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Kolkata and Hyderabad and National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO). Central Drug Testing Labs (CDTL) in Chandigarh, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata and Guwahati, state drugs testing labs at Gujarat, Karnataka Maharashtra and a lab at Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission (IPC), Ghaziabad are part of testing and analysis.
Central Drug Testing Lab (CDTL) Hyderabad which tested 5,461samples, CDTL Mumbai which tested 5,418 samples, CDTL Chennai which tested 5,257samples, CDTL Bengaluru which tested 2,033 samples and Maharashtra which tested 186 samples.
Gujarat has been leading in the country in terms of collection and analysis of drug samples as part of its ongoing crackdown on spurious drugs through its post-marketing surveillance programme. FDCA officers collected 11,300 samples in 2014-15 and 9,713 samples in 2013-14.