India plans on building text message-based medicine identification system

• According to a govt survey on drugs, 3.16% of drugs tested were below standards.
• 0.02% of the drugs tested were found to be fake.
  
• Proposal to the government to print 14-digit unique codes on packaging to identify drugs.
  

India has a fake medicine problem, and its government is attempting a crack down. According to a survey conducted in 2014 and 2016 to check the proportions of substandard drugs in India, 3.16% of the samples tested were substandard, while 0.02% were fake.

In order to confront the problem, India's highest advisory body on drugs, Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO), will discuss a mechanism to stop the distribution of fake medicines in a meeting on 16th May.

A proposal has been drafted according to which consumers will be able to check whether the medicine that they purchased is genuine by texting a unique code printed on the packaging of the medicine to a hotline number, said a report on Livemint.

Initially, the government plans to build a data bank of 300 medicine brands and customers’ consumption patterns in various parts of the country. Further, companies that manufacture drug will be asked to print a unique 14-digit alphanumeric code on the packaging of the drug. Consumers can then check their authenticity by sending the code to a predesignated number.

Fake medicines lead to drug resistance and even cause a significant number of deaths according to public health reports. According to the Central Drug Standard Control organisation, even samples from big drug makers were found to be of sub-standard quality during a survey that was carried out by the National Institute of Biologicals.

The government expects to bring down the percentage of substandard and fake drugs in the country to 2% in the next 3 years. According to a report released by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2017, approximately 10.5% of all medicines in low and middle-income countries including India are substandard.

The Drug regulatory body has also been doing some risk-based inspection of drug manufacturing plants as a part of this initiative to match global standards.