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INVESTIGATION:
SPURIOUS DRUGS
Deadly
Doses
The number of popular medicines being faked in India is growing. Yet,
little is being done about it.
By
Sayantan
Chakravarty, Sandeep Unnithan and
Arun
Ram
Heli Kools, 14, a class IX student of Bhopal's
All Saints' School, recently
returned home from a picnic with an aching stomach that ran like water.
On the advice of her guardians she popped some pills among which was the
popular analgesic Combiflam. A day later, the haemoglobin count in Heli's
blood had plummeted to 3. Her kidneys began to fail. A doctor, who flew
in from a well-known Delhi hospital, said her condition could not have
deteriorated so rapidly unless the analgesic was spurious and its contents
had played havoc with her body's immune system. Fortunately, Heli is on
the road to recovery.
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| "We
are concerned about the political patronage the drug mafia receives."
H.R. KHUSROKHAN MD, Glaxo India |
In Delhi
as the winter tightened its grip over the city, the answer to Heli's predicament
came from the chance arrest of a medical representative last month. On
a tip off, the police picked up Dhanraj Jindal, 26, and an acquaintance.
Found in Jindal's home in Shakarpur, an east Delhi ghetto, were almost
one lakh neatly packed tablets with batch numbers and compositions of
commonly used analgesics like Nimulid, apart from the diabetic pill Glizid.
Even the addresses of the original manufacturer were faithfully reproduced.
On probing their cache it was discovered that all these were spurious.
Reams of printed wrapping paper were seized. Panacea Biotech, makers of
the two drugs, found that Jindal's tablets contained merely lime (it means
that by selling at half the drugs' price he would make more profit than
the actual makers), and none of the declared active ingredients. Further
tests are on.
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| TOOTHLESS
ACTION: Raids in Patna (above) and Lucknow (below) have gone up since
April 2000 but have not been able to check the booming manufacture
of fake drugs |
What the
Delhi Police uncovered
was just the tip of a dangerous iceberg. For every five popular medicine
strips, one is now estimated by the Indian Medical Association (IMA) to
be a fake. Over the ast year-and-a-half, more than at any time previously,
a powerful syndicate of spurious drug manufacturers, mostly scattered
in Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, and a few in the South, helped
by equally unscrupulous disributors,
retailers and medical representatives, has come to control
the medicine market of India.
In Lucknow's
numerous seedy units, Betadine, commonly used for gargling, was being
manufactured in large quantities. The genuine mixture was skillfully substituted
with cheap concoctions transported from Delhi's Bhagirath Place. Nearly
350 fake bottles and labels for another 1,300 were recovered from a house
in Manak Nagar on the city's outskirts. A doctor's son was also arrested
following incriminating evidence.
Facts, like
bitter pills, are definitely getting harder to swallow. The Indian Pharmaceutical
Alliance (IPA) estimates that the syndicate has an approximate share of
Rs 1,500 crore in the Rs 20,000 crore pharmaceuticals market. Says IMA
General Secretary and cardiologist Prem Aggarwal: "We have a range
of such medicines. The rate at which fake drugs is flooding our markets,
diseases will never get cured."
Worse, a
fake drug, in the absence of the actual active ingredient-chalk,
turmeric and gulal are the commonly used substitutes-can rapidly exacerbate
a patient's condition. Sometimes, harmful substances can claim lives.
A fake with low dosage, in place of the prescribed one, acts adversely.
Confirms IPA Secretary-General D.G. Shah: "The consumer is being
cheated. He or she may even face a direct threat to life because of such
drugs."
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"Dealing
with the mafia is tough. We need more men to tackle it."
R.C.Jha
Drug Controller, Bihar |
According
to some IPA members, it is the fast-moving brands segment that is losing
heavily. Alembic, for instance, claims that its sale of antibiotic and
antibacterial tablets has dropped by 25-30 per cent in the past year.
Cipla has come up with a similar percentage range for its antibacterial
tablets. Dr Reddy's Lab says it is losing Rs 8-10 crore annually because
its antiulcerant and antibacterial capsules and tablets are being duplicated
without the active ingredients. Ranbaxy's figure for its losses ranges
between 10 and 12 per cent on its antibacterials, analgesics and tranquillisers
(like Calmpose), all in the form of injections, tablets, gels and suspensions.
Wockhardt figures it loses Rs 14 crore every year on its oral solids like
corticosteroids, appetite stimulants, antispasmodics and antibiotics.
Everywhere
the menace is only growing. In Tamil Nadu, 24 cases involving 12 manufacturers
of spurious drugs have come to light since April 1999. Penal measures
were initiated against the Chennai-based Shalom Pharmaceuticals in September
2000. The firm was found making fake Ampicillin and Amoxycillin tablets.
In fact Cipla, the makers of Amoxycillin, has had to change its packaging
thrice in the past four years and has now imported new machines. "Our
costs go up, but then what do we do?" asks a visibly rattled Amar
Lulla, the company's director.
-with Neeraj
Mishra, Stephen David, Sanjay Kumar Jha
and Subhash Mishra
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