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Health ministry’s mini drug testing lab project gets delayed despite awarding contract
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Shardul Nautiyal, Mumbai
June 29 , 2017
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Health ministry’s ambitious project of setting up mini-drug testing labs
at Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Delhi and Chennai
is getting delayed despite the fact that the ministry has already
appointed an agency for the same and awarded it a contract to procure
the equipment.
Till date, only 40% procurement of equipment for
each of the labs has been done in an erratic manner. In most of the
cases, HPLC has been procured but other high end equipment are taking a
long time to procure for reasons unknown. In Chennai and Delhi, space
and other issues are still being sorted out, explained an official
associated with the development.
As per official sources, three
of the eight mini- labs were expected to start this year at Nhava Sheva
at Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) in Navi Mumbai, Mumbai Airport and
Ahmedabad Airport as a part of its mandate to control exports and
imports of spurious drugs but many equipment are still at the
procurement stage.
According to the plan, labs will be equipped
with advanced analytical modalities like AAS, GC, HPLC, IR and NIRS
among others for effective detection, analysis and reporting on drug
quality. This is aimed at enhancing the capability for analysis and
detection of spurious, NSQ and counterfeit medicines in less than 40
seconds time for exports at the airport without any manual intervention,
according to a senior CDSCO official.
Estimated to cost around Rs.25
crore for which funds have already been sanctioned, the mini-labs will
be manned by a team of nine technical personnel led by a senior
scientific officer. Government is also planning to expand CDSCO’s
capacity by 2020 by adding a total of 20 mini drug-testing labs at the
port offices of the drug regulator.
Central government has allocated Rs.900
crore for enhancing manpower and capacities of mini labs at port
offices and mobile labs at CDSCO level. A total of additional 1,195
posts were also sanctioned for upgradation of manpower and labs under
the 12th five year plan.
Currently, there are seven drug-testing
labs in the country in Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Guwahati,
Chandigarh and Kasauli and state drugs testing labs at Gujarat,
Karnataka, Maharashtra with an autonomous lab at Indian Pharmacopoeia
Commission (IPC), Ghaziabad for drug testing and analysis.
In
August 2015, the cabinet committee on economic affairs approved a
proposal to strengthen the country’s drug regulatory system at an
estimated cost of Rs.1,750 crore. The
proposal envisaged the setting up of testing labs and a training academy
for regulatory and drug-testing officials at the central and state
levels. It also envisaged additional manpower for regulatory structures.
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