In September, 49 drugs failed quality tests; 1.5% Samples fail out of 3,000 every month: Govt Data

Mangalore Today News Network

New Delhi, October 26, 2024: The rate of drug failure in India hovers at about 1.5 per cent of the total samples picked, government data shows.

Every month, around 3,000 medicine samples are tested, with about 49 failing to meet quality standards, the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) told DD News and ANI on Friday while explaining the latest drug alert for September, which again shows several top-selling medicines failing quality tests.

The current rate of Not of Standard Quality (NSQ) drugs, however, is much lower than previous years. “Vigilant action and monitoring of drugs by CDSCO drastically bring down the percentage of less efficacious drugs,” said DCGI Rajeev Singh Raghuvanshi, who heads the country’s apex drug regulatory body — Central Drugs Standards Control Organisation (CDSCO).

In September’s list, 49 commonly used drugs such as the anti-diabetes drug Metformin Hydrochloride, stomach infection drug metronidazole tablets, painkiller diclofenac sodium, antibiotic gentamicin injection and anti-allergic fexofenadine hydrochloride are mentioned.

Separate list of spurious drugs

The regulator has released a separate list without naming the pharmaceutical companies which are “declared as spurious for September-2024”. These drugs are not manufactured by the original makers of the product and hence, are called spurious by the government.

This list includes four medicines — Cipla’s Urimax D, Torrent Pharmaceuticals’ Shelcal, Alkem Lab’s Pan D and Zydus Healthcare’s DecaDurabolin injection.

All four pharmaceutical companies have informed drug regulators that these products are not produced by them, and an investigation is underway to identify the actual perpetrators behind the scam.

“The actual manufacturer (as per label claim) has informed that the impugned batch of the product has not been manufactured by them and that it is a spurious drug. The product is purported to be spurious, however, the same is subject to the outcome of the investigation,” CDSCO announced while making the list public.