The Gujarat Food and Drug Administration (FDCA) is planning to collaborate with France based bioMérieux to train and equip FDCA officers on rapid microbial testing as a part of their strategic partnership for knowledge sharing discussed at the recently concluded Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit (VGGS) - 2017 at Gandhinagar.

Gujarat government signed 8 such strategic partnerships with overseas and Indian companies to upgrade the knowledge of the Gujarat FDCA officers on relevant areas of concern challenging the regulatory authorities globally and in India.

The conventional microbial testing methods takes almost 14 days which is highly time consuming and defeats the purpose of delivering safe, sterile and uncontaminated pharmaceutical products to the consumer and patient. The microbial testing developed and shared by French company will help detect contamination in pharma products in 3 to 4 hours time and help ascertain its sterility in a timely manner.

Said Gujarat FDCA Commissioner Dr H G Koshia, “It is a major breakthrough for Gujarat to have knowledge partners as overseas companies like bioMerieux which is a leader and has expertise in microbial testing. FDCA officers will soon get trained on the same by collaborating with a 200-year old company co-founded by a Louis Pasteur associate having a legacy of delivering quality and actionable results to clinicians for the best patient care through its microbiology labs.”  

Done as a part of strategic partnerships for knowledge sharing with foreign companies, Gujarat FDCA did a similar kind of exercise of training 50 drug inspectors to detect faulty medical devices and sub-standard drugs in line with the training imparted to US FDA inspectors  through a collaboration with US-based Underwriters Laboratories (UL), a global safety consulting and certification company. UL EduNeering, the compliance education and training services business division of UL, led this initiative.

The Gujarat government also signed MoUs worth Rs. 15,000 crore with both Indian and international companies in the pharma sector during the recently concluded Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit (VGGS) - 2017 at Gandhinagar held between January 10 and January 13, 2017 under the theme Connecting India to the World with focus on ‘Make in Gujarat’.

The investments coming through MoUs are aimed at promoting Gujarat’s pharma manufacturing strength and align it with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ‘Make in India’ campaign, said an official associated with the development.