Mumbai's Jaslok Hospital has advised its doctors not to prescribe medicine made by Ranbaxy Laboratories to their patients. Apollo Pharmacy, the country's largest chain of drug stores, has stopped selling Ranbaxy medicine and has suspended procurement from the company.
This comes after Ranbaxy, now majority-owned by Daiichi Sankyo of Japan, paid $500 million in the US for fudging data while seeking approvals from the Food and Drug Administration to launch products there.
Ranbaxy managing director and CEO Arun Sawhney has asserted that quality is no longer an issue, and he is willing to "stand behind every pill of Ranbaxy in any corner of the world".
But that doesn't seem to have helped. This isn't the first time that the quality of Indian medicine has come under suspicion.
A 2010 report by the International Policy Network found that seven per cent of drugs bought from wholesale traders were substandard, and 3.6 per cent of the drugs from traders contained no active ingredients whatsoever. Some of the spurious drugs contained chalk or talcum powder mixed with a pain reliever to trick and defraud the patient.
As many as 92 per cent of pharmacists said they have been offered substandard or spurious drugs for cheaper prices. This happens because the sector is inadequately regulated - there are over 20,000 registered pharmaceutical companies in the country.
The task of monitoring so many companies is never going to be easy. India, as a result, is the most competitive and fragmented pharmaceutical market in the world. There are over a hundred brands for every off-patent medicine. A market share of a few percentage points is good enough to make you the leader in the market.
Also, because the market is hyper-competitive, pharmaceutical companies offer all kinds of inducements to doctors to boost sales. These can range from office stationery to refrigerators, televisions, cars, overseas junkets and even taking care of weddings in the family. The result is over-prescription.
The indiscriminate prescription of antibiotics has made India a major source of superbugs. Doctors in India continue to prescribe cough syrups, though they went out of use elsewhere ages ago. This state of affairs is a legacy of India's earlier patent laws. At the time of Independence, India had inherited a regime of product patents (meaning the drugs could not be copied by another manufacturing method).
Why substandard and fake drugs are rampant in India - Rediff.com Business
This comes after Ranbaxy, now majority-owned by Daiichi Sankyo of Japan, paid $500 million in the US for fudging data while seeking approvals from the Food and Drug Administration to launch products there.
Ranbaxy managing director and CEO Arun Sawhney has asserted that quality is no longer an issue, and he is willing to "stand behind every pill of Ranbaxy in any corner of the world".
But that doesn't seem to have helped. This isn't the first time that the quality of Indian medicine has come under suspicion.
A 2010 report by the International Policy Network found that seven per cent of drugs bought from wholesale traders were substandard, and 3.6 per cent of the drugs from traders contained no active ingredients whatsoever. Some of the spurious drugs contained chalk or talcum powder mixed with a pain reliever to trick and defraud the patient.
As many as 92 per cent of pharmacists said they have been offered substandard or spurious drugs for cheaper prices. This happens because the sector is inadequately regulated - there are over 20,000 registered pharmaceutical companies in the country.
The task of monitoring so many companies is never going to be easy. India, as a result, is the most competitive and fragmented pharmaceutical market in the world. There are over a hundred brands for every off-patent medicine. A market share of a few percentage points is good enough to make you the leader in the market.
Also, because the market is hyper-competitive, pharmaceutical companies offer all kinds of inducements to doctors to boost sales. These can range from office stationery to refrigerators, televisions, cars, overseas junkets and even taking care of weddings in the family. The result is over-prescription.
The indiscriminate prescription of antibiotics has made India a major source of superbugs. Doctors in India continue to prescribe cough syrups, though they went out of use elsewhere ages ago. This state of affairs is a legacy of India's earlier patent laws. At the time of Independence, India had inherited a regime of product patents (meaning the drugs could not be copied by another manufacturing method).
Why substandard and fake drugs are rampant in India - Rediff.com Business
