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Written By: Agencies | Published : March 13, 2016 1:23 PM IST
The Indian Government has banned the manufacture and sale of more than 300 combination medicines, including two widely used cough syrups, being sold without government approval, a senior health ministry official said on Saturday. This was done to curb the misuse of illegal drugs in India.
Combination drugs are used worldwide to make it simple for patients to take drugs and one don t have to depend on multiple drugs for their ailments. But inconsistent enforcement of drug laws in India has led to the proliferation of hundreds of such medicines entering the market based on approval from regulators of individual states, rather than the central government. Read to know if the illegal drugs were approved by CDSCO.
In 2014, India set up a committee to review more than 6,000 combinations that had entered the market based only on state regulators approval. Policymakers gave pharmaceutical companies a chance to retroactively prove the safety and efficacy of these drugs by submitting data on their drugs. The committee was tasked with classifying the drugs into rational, irrational, and those that need further studies, said KL Sharma, a joint secretary at the health ministry.
The banned medicines include the codeine-based cough syrups Phensedyl and Corex, the Times of India said in a report earlier on Saturday, citing unnamed sources. Phensedyl, made by U.S. drugmaker Abbott Laboratories, accounts for about a third of the Indian cough syrup market, and its sales are estimated to make up more than 3 percent of Abbott s $1 billion India revenue. Corex is sold by Pfizer Inc. Here is how combination drugs treat brain cancer.
Doctors and public health experts in India and abroad have warned that increasing use of antibiotic combinations in India may be contributing to antibiotic resistance. India is a particular concern as the market share of combination drugs versus single drugs is bigger than anywhere in the world. The combination was not approved for sale in major markets such as the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan and Australia.
Source: CDSCO
Image source: Shutterstock
