India about to ban 400 popular yet harmful drugs

After 2007, it is now that more than 344 drugs have been banned in India. Being a server of great population, India has also become the largest nation for sale of drugs with fixed combinations. But the fact that these drugs are irrational and disapproved by the national regulator and most other counties, is one which is blatantly ignored by the Indians and the medicine suppliers who supply in India.  Most of them are not permitted for sale in other countries with more rigorous regulations but Indian dealers only look for profits rather than human care.

The time is not far when the number of banned drugs will reach 400. Mainly because of the harmful side effects these fixed combination drugs cause. We know that people will keep on buying these age old drugs under the impression that these support their immunity and the ease with which they are available in the markets. The only measure to stop the ill inducing consumption is by banning these drugs completely from the markets.

Among these banned medicines, most popular ones are Benadryl, Vicks Action 500, Corex, Phensedyl, Nimprex, Disprin, which are competent enough to harm anti-microbial resistance and their high toxicity can cause organ failures. To solidify this issue, editor of Monthly Index of Medical Specialties, Dr C. M Gulhati said, “90% are irrational and we have no business letting our people consume all sorts of funny combinations that are no longer in use globally”.

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The sale of these types of medicines is unlawful because a permutated drug needs to be permitted by the national regulator even if the individual elements are pre-approved. Simply because it is stupid to go with the logic that since A, B and C are separately standard drugs, so A+B+C will automatically is approved. We wonder how these harmful drugs entered the market in the first place. Well the answer would be the inconsistent enforcement of drug laws which allowed them to come unnoticed by the Centre. One health ministry official reported that “The products were approved at the state level despite our issuing warnings to states’ drug licensing authorities”

Despite strict trials, which were brought into action to overcome this issue, a huge chunk of drugs still overlooked governments notice, and only 6,600 pharmacy units out of 15,000 responded positively. The others must be under the impression that probably the government may not take any action against them. But now that they know proper inspections are being done, the defaulters are knocking doors of courts for help.

The whole process of picking out the irrational drugs apart from the rational ones has been “a comprehensive exercise that took into account entire literature on fixed dose combination medicines available in Indian markets. It’s an on-going process and some combinations may even require clinical trials”.

As a suggestive solution to this problem, Dr C.M Gulhati came forward and stated that, “We must check the efficient drug regulators in western countries, namely US and UK to see what is safe and what’s not. It may not be an ideal solution as Indians are a different race but some reference point to begin with”.

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