As part of the programme to strengthen the drug regulatory mechanism in the North Eastern region of India, the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) is planning to set up a Central Drug Standard Control Organization (CDSCO) sub zonal office at Guwahati by April, 2014.  The plan would also involve strengthening of the drug testing infrastructure.

Licensing of blood banks, vaccines, medical devices and life saving medicines of 12 eastern zone states including seven states of North East is currently being done by CDSCO East Zone with its office at Kolkata.

As per the plan, S K Mukhopadhaya will head the sub zonal office in the capacity of Deputy Drug Controller along with five drug control officers in a couple of months time.  Says Dr G N Singh, DCGI, "This exercise is a part of the plan to curb the malpractices happening in the seven north eastern states due to lack of stringent enforcement of the law on account of lack of manpower and infrastructure. Moreover, the North East India shares its borders with Bhutan, China and Myanmar and hence is vulnerable from the aspect of getting smuggled not of standard and sub standard drugs and products, thus endangering patient safety”.

We are currently focusing on North Eastern part of India which has a weak drug regulatory mechanism and needs to be addressed urgently, he said.

Meanwhile, with the aim of ensuring safe supply of medicines, a team of drug control officials from the DCGI office is also in the process of doing surveillance through random sampling of medicines in consumer states of Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Bihar after completing a similar exercise in Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh.

Around 60 drug samples were collected during the random sampling done between 26 December and 31 December 2013 in Rajasthan by the DCGI officials.   

"The surveillance exercise is going to be carried forward in the Southern part of India in the near future," informs Dr Singh.