From the news desk of Indian Barcode
Corporation
NEW DELHI: You could soon find out
whether the drug you just bought from your pharmacy is original or
counterfeit/spurious through a single SMS.
Drug Consultative Committee (DCC)
-- in its last meeting on February 15 -- has approved the proposal that for
every strip of medicine available in India ought
to have a 2D bar code and a unique randomly generated numeric code (UID).
A phone number will be mentioned
above the bar code, where the consumer can SMS the UID. A message will tell the
consumer whether the drug is an original.
DCC's
recommendation will now be sent to Drug Technical Advisory Board. The final
notification will come from the Union health ministry.
Once approved, India will join
Italy, Malaysia and the European Union to make 2D bar code and UID mandatory
in an effort to curb spurious and counterfeit drugs.
Drug
controller general of India, Dr Surinder Singh, told TOI, "Once approved,
every strip of drug bought in India will have both the 2D bar code and an UID.
It will destroy the spurious or counterfeit drugs market and assure consumers
of the quality of medicines they buy. In most countries, bar coding is
voluntary."
DCGI
will have to amend Rule 96 (manner of labeling requirement) of Drugs and
Cosmetics Act, saying "every drugs manufactured in India shall bear on its
primary label Unique Identifier Code and 2D bar code that shall be used for
anyone to verify the drug through a system of SMS by mobile phone."
Experts
say the proposal might face serious opposition from the small and medium scale
drug firms, who will have to buy equipment for bar-coding which will increase
their production cost.
"We
will give these firms a good enough phase out time. However, we have seen that
if 2D bar code and UID is printed on the strips, production cost goes up by
just around 30 paisa. It will come down to 10 paisa once the technology is used
by everyone," Dr Singh said.
Earlier,
commerce ministry had passed a rule that all medicine packs manufactured in
India only for export must carry a barcode as of July 1, 2011. This will allow
medicines to be traced and tracked to its source of origin.
"However,
it is not legislation but a rule passed by the commerce ministry. It also
involves just bar coding which can be duplicated whereas our proposal is to
have both UID and 2D bar coding," Dr Singh added.
It
is now common to come across medicines seemingly packaged in the right way but
which do not contain the correct ingredients. In worst-case scenario, may be
filled with highly toxic substances. WHO says, even one single case of
counterfeit medicine is not acceptable because it puts patients at risk and
undermines the public confidence in their medicines. Organization for Economic
Co-operation and Development estimated that up to $200 billion of International
Trade could have been in counterfeit products in 2005. According to the Union
health ministry's estimates, 5.6% of drugs in the country don't adhere to
standard quality, while 0.26% are spurious.
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