BILASPUR, India, (Reuters) – The recent deaths of 15 people linked to a small pharmaceutical factory in the eastern city of Raipur have highlighted how easily adulterated drugs can enter India’s huge healthcare system.
Experts say the government is underestimating the scale of the problem, hampering efforts to rein in abuses in one of the world’s biggest markets for counterfeit and substandard drugs.
Stuffed in glossy packaging and sometimes labelled with the names of legitimate companies, fake drugs are commonly passed off to Indian consumers as genuine and sold in developing nations around the world.
Estimates vary of the number of fake drugs in India. According to an estimate from the World Health Organization, one in five drugs in India is fake or faulty. The Indian government, by contrast, says the figure is closer to 0.3 percent.
Regulating a sector beset by bribery, collusion, cartels and other coercive practices poses a challenge for Indian government officials when selecting which manufacturers to buy from, a 2013 report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found.
India’s drug regulator was criticized for only having 124 employees, according to a parliamentary report two years ago. By comparison, the drugs regulator in the United States, where the population is four times smaller, has about 14,500 employees.
“States procure medicine through a tender and the manufacturers that bid the lowest quote win the order to supply, regardless of their manufacturing process or distribution systems,” said Bejon Kumar Misra, head of Partnership for Safe Medicines India, a non-governmental organisation.
