In a strategic development, the World Health Organization (WHO) recently expressed its keen interest to set up a centre of excellence (CoE) in regulatory science at the Gujarat FDCA's office. Interestingly, this will be WHO's first CoE in the Asia-Pacific region marking it as a huge milestone for the state drug regulatory body in the state.

It is understood that a team of top officials from the WHO recently had high level discussions with the top government representatives from the state including additional chief secretary of state and Dr H G Koshia, commissioner of Gujarat FDCA. As per the reports if things go as planned all the financial and technical support will be given by the WHO while the state government will provide infrastructural support within the FDCA's building.

According to Dr Koshia, this is a huge achievement for the state regulators, especially since a global healthcare organization like WHO has selected Gujarat FDCA for establishing its centre from across the country. "This increases the credibility of the state FDCA tremendously as it stands testament to the fact that we have always strived our best to change and upgrade our regulatory requirements as per the global standards. We have seen to it that we always keep up with the changes in the drug regulation by adopting latest e-governance initiative that has helped us to get an edge over enacting better implementation of the laws of the land."

He further added that not only will they benefit from such a collaboration by getting latest updates on the WHO regulations and training by experts, it will also open up windows of opportunities for the regulators to get hands-on experience from regulatory experts from across the globe on new and changing regulatory requirements.