How our legal justice system enables a poor quality drug supply. Prashant Reddy and I write in the Deccan Herald today how our judiciary is complicit in enabling the pharmaceutical industry to bypass even the basics of compliance mechanisms to ensure high drug quality.

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We wrote about this very issue last February anticipating this shenanigan here:

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Here’s a response to a parliamentary question from December, 2004 explaining how 34 MPs lobbied the Govt to “Rationalise” (dilute) the GMP code:

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you can write to the Ministry at [email protected] expressing your opposition to any further extensions.

But lets see how this deadline came to be, shall we?

The new GMP code was first proposed back in 2018 – here’s the Gazette notification publishing the draft GMP:

Quick Thread:
On a Saturday evening, a hard working babu in the Ministry of Heatlh and Family Welfare published this👇 notification in the Gazette inviting comments on extending the deadline for implementation of the new Good Manufacture Code (GMP) that was to come into effect on Jan 4
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I realize we lack patience to read academic papers and want 10 sec reels, but here are some low hanging fruit which can make a real and substantial difference in our drug supply authored by the Health Minister the other day.

He speaks from experience of handling this issue himself

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t.co/eMC9mO8Mpi

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Here are a couple of in-depth reports which explain how public procurement of medicines works in our country:

t.co/6HjrXjUaj1

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And is on a list of approved manufacturers to supply Jan Aushadhi stores:
medicaldialogues.in/news/industr...

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The same manufacturer was also cited for making bad quality drugs in a response given in the HP State Assembly by the State Health Minister last year:
dineshthakur.com/wp-content/u...

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The J&K Medical Services Corp issued this advisory. This is a epidural that is injected directly into the spine of a woman in labor.

Thread 👇

I sent a petition to the Ministry of Health
regarding repeated failures of parental drugs, which have severe consequences to patients:

thetruthpill.in/wp-content/u...

Not mine, but saw this posted on another SM site. Makes you understand the outpouring of support for Mr Mangione, doesnt it?

Apparently a letter written by a pediatric oncologist to UHC

Good piece in The Hindu today that captures all the issues that ail our drug supply and the regulatory framework that governs it.

Reality of our drug supply👇

In the recently released Parliamentary Standing Committee Report, we find this nugget.

9266 NSQ drugs in our supply 2015-19.

Guess how many were prosecuted?

5.9% (593)

And convicted?

35

#BMKJ

thetruthpill.in/wp-content/u...

How the Ministry of Health evades direct questions from a member of the Parliament - Zero accountability:

Md Nadimul Haque asked three pointed questions of the Minister of Health based on an op-ed we had authored a couple of weeks ago.

Look at the responses to the first two questions below.