Over 40,000 drug samples collected for testing

Chennai: The drug regulatory authority — Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) — has collected over 43,000 drug samples under 15 therapeutic categories from across the country including thousands of samples from Tamil Nadu to assess their quality.

The sampling, earlier scheduled to be a one-month exercise, was extended to three months to ensure the collection of more drug samples in a comprehensive manner. Sampling of drugs imported into the country through its nine notified ports including Delhi, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata was carried out in collaboration with the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Hyderabad, as part of a national survey on spurious and not-of-standard quality (NSQ) drugs.

All the samples have been sent to Ghaziabad for final testing and analysis. According to sources, during this national drug survey, about 43,000 field data or samples were collected from various parts of the country based on a statistical design encompassing all the retail drug stores including government medical stores and PHCs.

The massive exercise will help to identify the geographical areas for eliminating the menace of NSQ drugs. The previous survey was carried out in 2009. Meanwhile, the National Sample Survey Office (NS SO) has asked the state governments to provide particulars on the number of retail outlets (district-wise); information on the maximum prescription of drugs under each of the 15 categories including their trade name district wise; number of civil hospital stores (district-wise); number of central medical store besides the number of Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS) dispensaries, to arrive at a statistical design for the survey.