Abstract

Indian Pharmaceutical Industry is the third largest in the world in terms of volume and this industry has a business of about USD 30 billion annually. Availability of quality medical products, especially drugs is important from the perspective of health of the consumers. The manufacture and sale of drugs in India is a licensed activity under Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940 and the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules, 1945. The use of ineffective, poor quality, harmful medicines can result in therapeutic failure, exacerbation of disease, resistance to medicines and sometimes death. Proper and effective enforcement of the Act is mandatory for curbing the sale, distribution and consumption of spurious which is not of standard quality medicines in any country, there by safeguarding the public health. In this paper, we report a post market quality survey of 3925 drug samples over a period of 30 months. Drugs Control Laboratory, Vijayawada, India during the said period (Jan, 2015 to June, 2017) 3925 samples were analyzed. It was found that, in the year 2015, 2016 and 2017 (up to June) the percentage of NSQ drugs was 5.70, 1.92 and 2.27%, respectively. The effective enforcement of Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940 is necessary at the field level to ensure that, safe medicines are made available to general public by and large.

Key words: Public health, spurious drug, not of standard quality drug, D & C Act 1940, Andhra Pradesh.