Govt may mandate QR codes on vaccines, key drugs to curb counterfeits

New Delhi:
Vaccines
, antimicrobials, narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances, and additional
cancer drugs
would have to mandatorily print or affix bar codes or quick response (QR) codes on their labels. This follows the government mulling the possibility of bringing them under Schedule H2 of Drug Rules to track their movement to curb counterfeiting.
Additionally, the government is considering inclusion of details of excipients on every medicine strip for 300 drug formulations that are under Schedule H2. Currently, the labels declare only those active substances added in the formulation.
An excipient is a constituent of a medicine other than the active substances, added in the formulation for a specific purpose. While most excipients are considered inactive, some can have a known action or effect in certain circumstances.
"The
Drug Controller General of India
(DCGI) will hold a meeting this week to deliberate on both the issues," people in the know told ET.
Earlier the drug regulatory authority had included a few cancer drugs to help validate the authenticity of medicines following incidents of refilling of expensive anti-cancer drugs with
counterfeit drugs
. It came to light that criminals in collusion with hospital pharmacies were found refilling empty vials of expensive anti-cancer medicines with counterfeit drugs. These fake drugs were then mixed with genuine stocks and sold to unsuspecting cancer patients, putting their lives at risk.
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In a bid to weed out spurious drugs, the regulator had made it mandatory for companies to have a barcode on the top 300 brands, so that information such as manufacturing licence and batch number can be accessed upon scanning. These drugs included widely-used analgesics, pain relievers, anti-platelet, vitamin supplements, blood-sugar lowering medicines and contraceptive tablets.

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