The All India Drugs Control Officers Confederation (AIDCOC) has claimed that the drug regulatory system of the country is at par with any other drug regulatory system prevalent across the globe and stressed that the Indian drug regulators are among the best law enforcers around the world.

Speaking on the sidelines of 'iPHEX-2014', the 3-day mega exhibition of Indian pharma products & technologies which is underway in Mumbai, AIDCOC general secretary Ravi Uday Bhaskar pointed out that it is easy to play the blame game and question the competency, especially since they cater to one of the largest population in the world, a job that is not easy to do considering the vastness and diversity of the country.

The Confederation, which has been working hard to improve the standard within the regulatory body, said that the government during the last several years has taken lot of pro-active steps to improve the standard and acumen of the drug officers and other drug officials through frequent training programme and induction seminars. In fact, AIDCOC pointed out that apart from in-house training sponsored and supported by the central and state governments, the state regulators also have been made to go through joint training session with the overseas drug regulatory agencies like US FDA, MHRA etc on a frequent basis.

Vehemently opposing the rumours that the Indian made drugs are not of highest quality, the AIDCOC general secretary informed that questioning the authenticity of the drugs manufactured in the country is equal to questioning the competence of Indian drug regulatory norms. “It has to be noted that over the past few years, the drug regulatory agency of this country has seen a mammoth change in its whole structure, from being a body consisting of merely 32 drug officials in the CDSCO to 300 drug officials selected on the basis of competence and acumen. It must be understood that the objective of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act 1940 & Rules 1945 is not for commerce, but to ensure availability of only safe and efficacious drugs to the patients.”

He further added that apart from all this, the drug officials also have the mammoth task of monitoring the huge number of over 6.5 lakh chemists and druggists shops across the country, a humongous task in itself seeing the complexity in monitoring them with limited manpower.  All said and done, he said that like in all organisation the Indian regulatory body too has its own glitches here and there, which are either tackled with by the government or are on a random scale raised by the Confederation from time to time.

“The problems we have are on internal level like increasing the manpower, expanding the infrastructure, training the drug officials etc, but they are in no way need to be made cause of concern for the safety of patients. Because we have been and will be prioritising our focus on the welfare of the patients first,” Bhaskar stressed.