As part of strengthening lab infrastructure in the state, the Gujarat Food and Drug Control Administration (FDCA) will soon start a drug testing lab in the Northern part of Gujarat at Patan with help from the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO). The Centre will bear 75 per cent of the cost as part of this lab upgradation programme and the rest 25 per cent will be borne by the state.

“With the starting of a lab at Patan, the number of drugs sampled and tested in Gujarat will further increase,” says Gujarat FDCA Commissioner Dr H G Koshia.  At present, Vadodara lab is testing the highest number of samples in the country.

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.

Further, Gujarat FDCA through its ongoing random sampling surveys at retail and wholesale stores, hospitals and manufacturing sites consolidated on an yearly basis across the state registered a collection of 13,540 samples last year which is the highest in the country.

This is followed by states like Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Himanchal Pradesh.

The FDCA's Vadodara based drug testing lab had 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.

This was followed by 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.

Done at an estimated cost of Rs.8.5 crore, the Union health ministry had entrusted the job of National Drugs Survey in July 28, 2014 to Noida based National Institute of Biologicals (NIB) which compiled it in the form of around 400 pages of well documented evidence based study based on the pan-India sampled field data to the tune of 48,000 samples.

The 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.