Poor Quality Drugs: 18 Pharma Companies To Lose Licenses

By OB Bureau On Mar 28, 2023

New Delhi: Eighteen pharma companies have been asked to stop manufacturing following the cancellation of their licenses. Show cause notices have also been issued to 26 pharma companies, NDTV quoted sources in the Union Health ministry as saying. The orders came as part of an ongoing crackdown on pharma companies amid reports of spurious drugs from India being sold abroad.

In a fortnight-long campaign, the Drugs Controller General of India had conducted surprise inspections of 76 pharmaceutical companies in 20 states.

Last month, Gujarat-based pharma company Zydus Lifesciences recalled more than 55,000 bottles of a generic medication used to treat gout from the US market. The medicine had failed impurities specifications. In Noida, near Delhi, three employees of a pharmaceutical firm were arrested after their cough syrup allegedly led to the death of 18 children in Uzbekistan last year. They were accused of manufacturing and selling adulterated drugs.

The Central and Uttar Pradesh drug authorities checked samples of Marion Biotech products and found 22 “not of standard quality” (adulterated and spurious). In February, a Chennai-based pharmaceutical company had to suspend production of a line of eye drops after US health authorities said they could be contaminated with a drug-resistant bacteria linked to reports of permanent vision loss and one death. EzriCare Artificial Tears eye drops, manufactured by Global Pharma Healthcare was apparently linked to cases of Pseudomonas Aeruginosa, which affected at least 55 people in the US, the report added.