HP High Court: File status report on setting up drug labs
Legal Correspondent
Shimla, September 22
The HP High Court has directed the state health authorities to inform it whether the pharmaceutical units, alleged to have produced substandard medicines, had approached any of the private laboratories in the state for the certification of the quality of said medicines manufactured by them or not.
It further asked the officials concerned if the said state-approved private laboratories had certified those drugs to be not of standard quality/adulterated/mis-branded and whether they had informed the State Drug Controller in that regard and if so, what action was taken in that regard.
A Division Bench of Chief Justice MS Ramachandra Rao and Justice Ajay Mohan Goel directed the authorities concerned to file a status report regarding the establishment of the drug laboratories in the state, for which proposals were made in 2013 and 2015 and money released by the Centre to the state government.
The court asked officials to explain why the state government intended to engage staff on “outsource” basis at such laboratories, instead of engaging personnel on regular basis.
The court passed this order on a petition contending that due to lack of proper drug testing laboratories in Himachal, numerous manufacturers were selling substandard and spurious drugs.
Baddi, the biggest pharmaceutical hub, does not have a proper up-to-the-mark laboratory. The drugs manufactured in the area are sent to a Kandaghat laboratory, which doesn’t even have proper equipment and is over-pressured.
Key questions
- Did producers of substandard medicines approach any private laboratory in the state for the certification of said drugs
- If those labs had certified those drugs to be not of standard quality, adulterated, mis-branded
- Whether the laboratories had informed the State Drug Controller in that regard and if so, what action was taken
