DA poorly equipped to detect spurious drugs

Lacks adequate lab facilities, manpower
The Drug Administration (DA), the country’s sole drug regulatory body, is failing to check counterfeit drugs flooding the local drug market due to lack of sufficient laboratory equipment and facilities and manpower shortage, posing serious threat to public health.
The deaths of about 25 children from renal failure after having toxic paracetamol syrups in last one and a half months once again exposed the DA’s ‘helplessness’ in checking the marketing of spurious drugs.
The DA monitors and enforces implementation of drug regulations including regulation of production, pricing, marketing, export and import of all types of drugs in the country.
But the drug regulatory body has only one drug testing laboratory in Chittagong while it uses another drug-testing laboratory at Mohakhali under the Directorate General of Health Services. Both the government’s drug testing laboratories remain in shabby state.
The DA that also is supposed to supervise the procurement of raw and packaging materials by the drug manufacturers, have only 24 drug supervisors against the sanctioned posts of 45 to monitor the drug markets in 68 districts. Of them, only 16 drug supervisors are stationed outside Dhaka while eight at the head office in Dhaka.
Lack of modern equipment and manpower shortage kept the government-run drug testing laboratory of Mohakhali handicapped for years.
“To test drugs, vaccines, and sera, the laboratory uses most sophisticated machines that require central air-conditioning,” said a high official at the laboratory. But the laboratory housed on the second floor of the Institute of Public Health building is not centrally air-conditioned, he said.
For smooth running of such a laboratory, it also needs protective netting to keep away dusts and insects, he added.
The laboratory also lacks modern equipment to test and identify sub-standard drugs, while some pharmaceutical companies in the country are producing and marketing counterfeit drugs, putting the public health at risk, the official observed.
Drug experts observe that people are at great risk of taking sub-standard drugs, which may even cause their deaths, because of lax monitoring by the government.
The 25 children died after taking paracetamol suspension of Rid Pharmaceutical company in recent time. Earlier in 1992, a total of 339 children had died after taking paracetamol syrups of five companies –Ad Flame Pharma, BC Laboratories, Polycam Laboratories, Rex Pharma and Pan Asia Pharma. The five companies were closed after drug administration’s directive.
Sources at the DA suspect that one of these companies is still producing drugs by taking permission from it under different brand names.
A total of 45 cases are under trial at drug court of the Drug Administration against about 30 drug manufacturers for producing and marketing spurious and unauthorised drugs in the country, said a source at the DA.
Licence of three drug companies has been cancelled while about 50 licences suspended in the last two years for manufacturing and marketing adulterated drugs, he said. Besides, some 1,073 cases have been filed during adulteration drives of 2007-May 2009.
Since 1984, the workload of the drug administration has increased by about 20 times as now a large number the drug companies are in operation, said another DA official, adding that steps have yet to be taken to fill in these vacant posts. The situation appears to be bleak as some of its employees are going to retire soon.
The DA sources said about 800 drugs companies, including 258 allopathic, unani, ayurvedic and herbal companies, are producing drugs and meeting 97 percent local demands and exporting drugs to about 70 countries.
Assistant Director of the DA, AA Salim Barami told The Daily Star yesterday, “Without strengthening the Drug Administration by recruiting manpower, increasing logistic support and setting up modern laboratories, it would not be possible to monitor all of the companies’ thousands of products.”
Drug Administration Director Brig Gen M Ismail Hossain said the Drug Administration has sent a proposal to the health ministry to increase its manpower to 745.
Now the total manpower of the Drug Administration is 122.

Courtesy of The Daily Star