Pharma hub Baddi to get first drug-testing lab today

Solan, March 9

The pharmaceutical hub of Asia, housing 350 pharmaceutical firms, will finally get a drug-testing laboratory tomorrow. Chief minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu will inaugurate the lab tomorrow during his visit to the Doon and Arki Assembly segments.

The wait is over

• The need to establish a drug-testing lab in the Baddi-Barotiwala-Nalagarh area, which houses Asia’s largest pharmaceutical hub, has been felt for long. The BBN belt has 120 export-oriented manufacturing units, including Dr Reddy’s Lab, Cadila, Cipla, Torrent etc.

This is the first lab to be set up in the state ever since the Baddi-Barotiwala-Nalagarh industrial hub saw investment by nearly 350 pharmaceutical companies after 2003.

The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare had provided Rs 30 crore to the state Health Department in 2017 to set up the lab as part of the 12th Five-Year Plan, for strengthening the staff of the Drug Control Administration (DCA), including upgrade of its testing labs.

The DCA had purchased a building from the state Housing and Urban Development Authority to house the modern testing lab in 2017, but setting up of the lab was hanging fire for nearly eight years.

Public-sector enterprise HCL had been entrusted with the job of setting up the lab and its officials had recently visited the site.

The lab is expected to test at least 8,000 to 10,000 legal samples of drugs annually. As the drugs manufactured in the state also figure in the monthly list of sub-standard drugs, the lab is expected to strengthen the quality control mechanism of the DCA. In the absence of an accredited lab in the area, the manufacturers have to get the drug samples tested in Chandigarh and nearby places, which is a time-consuming and cumbersome exercise.

The DCA is at present dependent on the ill-equipped Composite Testing Lab (CTL) at Kandaghat for testing drugs which has limited facilities to test drugs.

Since the CTL is not equipped to handle specialised analysis, including microbiology-related investigations in the absence of sophisticated equipment, officials have to outsource such tests from Chandigarh-based labs.

The need to establish a drug-testing lab in the Baddi-Barotiwala-Nalagarh area, which houses Asia’s largest pharmaceutical hub, has been felt for long. The BBN belt has 120 export-oriented manufacturing units, including Dr Reddy’s Lab, Cadila, Cipla, Torrent etc.