The Hindu Business Line : Manufacturing spurious drugs is equivalent to mass murder

STORY so far: For me work is worship, and I don't think gods would mistake you for doing your job even as the whole town is busy with some celebration. At the office, I get the invite to represent the company at the Income-tax Office for the launch of the e-filing system.

How soon we are catching up with the developed countries! I am amazed. And during the buffet, there is a lot of tax humour to go round, as if to make the pain of taxpaying less intolerable.

Episode 45

Before I resume my story, let me confess that I missed talking to you readers at least as much as you would have missed me. I lost one week because I was out of town to visit a friend for a social occasion, and another week went down the drain what with a viral fever that I picked up on my travel.

There was something more I had picked up — a few medicines bought from odd shops in upcountry places to beat the fever and some such. It is not possible to continue taking rest day after day when there is work in the office and at last I gathered enough energy one morning to report for duty.

"Hey, Swati," Chandru called from the portico, even as I was getting down weakly from an auto-rickshaw. "You look too tired?"

"Nothing," I told him, "cold, cough and the works."

But boss was a bit too concerned when he saw me. "You could have told me, Swati," he almost chided me. "I thought you were having a nice time with your friend in Tirunelveli."

"Sir, I think I have got zapped out by the medicines," I said, almost collapsing into a chair, irreverently.

"Show me the prescription you got from the doc there," boss demanded, "and also the tablets, capsules and whatever you have been gulping."

I pulled out from my purse a few recent prescriptions. "They seem okay," remarked the boss, and I could retrieve from my handbag a whole lot of golis, of different colours and shapes. "I suspect something," muttered the boss, picking up the intercom. "Ask Gupta to come over, fast."

A hot cup of Milo with the boss, and what more you need for energy, and presently Gupta entered the room. Without wasting time, he studied the medicine wrappers with a pocket lens and said, "Boss, this is all fake." He then looked at me and said, "It is a miracle that you are still alive after eating all this stuff!"

*********

During the course of the day, I was present for a series of meetings. There was a lunch session that the boss had fixed earlier, inviting his chums from the pharma industry. "Be around," he told me. "I want you to know about the spurious drug problem that is plaguing the industry."

When Lalit Kumar of Wockhardt spoke, I learnt how the counterfeit drugs industry is no longer restricted to tablets and capsules but graduated to production of expensive and sophisticated injections, expensive tablets and inhalers.

Traditionally, antibiotics, anti-protozoals, anti-malarial, anti-hormone and steroids were the candidates for faking. Now `lifestyle drugs' such as nutritional, anti-diabetes, anti-hypertensives and cancer drugs are the new victims. Technology cuts both ways; for instance, with superior printing technology that makes labelling easy, many companies are getting bowled over — they are not able to identify the counterfeit of their own products because of the labelling and packaging.

I felt a bit of nausea when I heard from one guest that India and China have the dubious distinction of being the largest producers and exporters of spurious drugs in the world. And that the WHO has found that in Vietnam and Myanmar, more than 40 per cent of antibiotics imported from India and as much as 11 per cent in the market are sub-standard.

*********

Next, there was a session in the conference hall addressed by Dr Rihana, a senior scientist from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). "How big is the spurious drugs market?" she asked. According to one estimate, the annual sales figure could be close to Rs 3,000-4,000 crore, about 15-20 per cent of the total domestic pharmaceutical business. Manufacturing spurious drugs is equivalent to mass murder, she cited the Minister's quote. And also what Dr R. A. Mashelkar, Director-General, CSIR had said: "The penalty for sale and manufacture of spurious drugs that causes grievous hurt or death be enhanced from life imprisonment to death and a fine of Rs 1 lakh or three times the value of drugs seized, whichever is more."

*********

Third meeting was with the Commissioner of Police. I had accompanied the boss and Gupta for the brief visit to the supercop's office. "Look at this," he pushed a folder towards us. The first sheet had the title, "Recent catch of fakes" and listed the following: Shelcal 500 tablets, Calcium Sandoz injection, Chymoral Forte tablets, R-Cinex capsule, AKT-4 and AKT-3 capsule, Synthcinon (51.V) injection, Voveran injection, Tegrital-200 and Tegrital-100 tablets, Voveran-D and Voveran SR-100 tablets, Aciloc-300 tablets, Nise tablets, Betadine Solution syrup, Betadine Ointment and CZ3.

"We have seized a sizable quantity of the fakes which were being palmed off as leading brands of MNCs such as Elder, Novartis, Lupin, Cadilla, Dr Reddy's Lab and Win-Medicare," observed the Commissioner. "There is a big craze among men to tone up their vim, vigour and vitality, and a number of drugs have flooded the market," he continued. "We found a popular ayurvedic brand adulterated with allopathic ingredients. Then there are more serious things; we seized duplicates of Glizid tablets, a medicine for diabetes patients and Nimulid, a pain reliever." Then he said in a hush: "Tonight, I am sending a team under the ACP (North) to raid a hideout in Matra Nagar. Want to join the party?"

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It was past midnight when the police jeep stopped outside my block. I hopped in, saying "Hello, ACP sir." "Call me Bose," he said. Within an hour, we were at the site of operation, after having switched from the jeep to an unmarked car. "Swati, we wait till they start the process of `manufacture'."

From a vantage point near a window, hidden in the darkness of the bushes, I could see those wile men mixing powders and solutions of god-knows-what into tablets, and then on to stuffing the same in wrappers. There was a police officer standing next to me and I almost wanted to grab his pistol and implement what Dr Mashelkar had suggested.

(To be continued)

Swati_CA@hotmail.com

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