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| Sunday, 23 June 2002 |
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All-out war on substandard drugs by Shanika Sriyananda Liyanage Over 47 drug items, which were found to substandard, have been withdrawn from the shelves during the last six months by the Drug Authority of the Ministry of Health, Nutrition and Welfare. The items including, tablets, capsules and injections were of poor quality and not upto the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines which Sri Lanka follows while purchasing drugs from foreign manufacturers. "Ninety percent of those substandard drug items were from India", P. Madarasinghe, Food and Drug Inspector of the Drug Authority told the 'Sunday Observer'. The drug monitoring system of the Authority, which does post market surveillance with the assistance from authorised officers from each district to withdraw substandard items from the market, annually. "The quality of a drug cannot be identified from its basic appearance and had to undergo a laboratory test to get the best results", Madarasinghe said. He calls on the public to send in their complaints to the Authority when they find tablets with cracks, different colours and liquids in bottles with unusual odour with bubbles on top. "The main responsibility lies with the prescribing doctor since he is the only one who could judge the effectiveness of the said drug. When it is found to be ineffective, after several prescriptions of a particular drug, the prescriber should inform the Authority to do a test to check its quality", he pointed out. According to him, when they find a particular drug to be substandard the Authority will issue a circular to all authorised officers, islandwide, directing them to withdraw the entire stock of the particular drug from the market. Under the directions of Dr. Ajith Mendis, the Deputy Director General of Laboratory services and the Director of the Drug Authority (DA), the DA had withdrawn 30 drug items last year which were detected to be substandard. |
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