Keen to combat the issue of spurious drugs menace, top professional healthcare groups across the country have recently come together to sensitise and bring in attention to this issue. The whole initiative was aimed at increasing awareness about the dangers of spurious medicines and how to efficiently identify and deal with the cases.

World Health Professions Alliance (WHPA) is spearheading it in association with the Indian Pharmaceutical Association (IPA), the Indian Medical Association (IMA) and the Indian Council of Nurses (ICN).  This collaborative effort, a first of its kind pilot project, emphasized on developing collaborative practice by all the healthcare professionals through training programmes on spurious drugs.

In fact, to curb the use of spurious drugs in the market and to improve patient outcomes, the associations recently released a detailed handbook on handling spurious drugs for healthcare professionals. Pradeep Mishra, project manager of WHPA informed that the Alliance already had guidelines with expertise from across the globe on this subject which was later value added by incorporating inputs and insights from the experts from IPA, ICN and IMA.

The Drug Controller General of India (DCGI), Dr G N Singh was also a part of the initial advisory board meetings that envisioned this project. In fact the handbook comprises of latest statistics and data contributed by the CDSCO as well, making it an important reference point on the subject. Apart from professional healthcare groups, the campaign had the support from senior government officials from the ministry of health and family welfare (MoHFW) and regulators from Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO).

Mishra added that this handbook includes latest data and expert observations made by the stakeholders from their relevant field making it a valuable manual in the fight against spurious drugs. “It has important information based on the IPA’s expertise on the Good Pharmacy Practice and how standards on quality of pharmacy services can provide a robust policy and practice framework to strengthen the pharmaceutical supply and distribution chain. Similarly, IMA has corroborated on important role that doctors have in combating this issue. It highlights the physician’s role of how they should familiarize themselves with the drugs most likely to be counterfeited and their identification, to warn the patient,” he said.

It is understood that the manual contains direction by IMA on how doctors aught to advise the patients to buy medicines and advise destruction of label and container after use. While ICN stressed on the role that medical professionals like nurses can play to identify spurious drugs while administrating the medicines to patients to avoid untoward incidence.

It is understood that before collaborating on this project in India, the WHPA, an international body comprising of Council of Nurses, the International Pharmaceutical Federation, the World Confederation for Physical Therapy, the World Dental Federation and the World Medical Association, had successfully organized such awareness projects in the African countries and China.