The government of India cancelled licenses of eighteen pharmaceutical companies for manufacturing spurious medicines following an inspection by the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) on 76 companies across 20 States, news agency ANI reported citing official sources on Tuesday.
As per the report, a huge crackdown is underway on pharma companies across the country related to the manufacturing of spurious medicines.
"Action on 70 companies in Himachal Pradesh and 45 in Uttarakhand and 23 in Madhya Pradesh during govt crackdown on companies manufacturing spurious medicines," official sources were quoted by ANI.
The orders were issued as part of an ongoing crackdown on pharmaceutical companies in response to reports of counterfeit drugs being sold in other countries. The campaign has been on for about 15 days, as per media reports.
The raids come amid reports of deaths and illnesses from Indian drugs from several nations. Last month, Gujarat-based pharma company Zydus Lifesciences recalled more than 55,000 bottles of a generic medication used to treat gout from the US market. The medicine had failed impurities specifications.
Last week, the Uttar Pradesh Drugs Controlling and Licensing Authority cancelled Marion Biotech's manufacturing licence after 18 children died in Uzbekistan last year, allegedly after consuming its cough syrup.
The incident which occurred last December spurred government and state narcotics officials in India to initiate an inquiry into the situation.
The Noida police detained three Marion Biotech employees from its office in Sector 67, and a lookout notice was issued for two of its directors after an FIR was filed against all of them.
The FIR had come in the wake of investigations finding that samples of Marion Biotech's drugs were "adulterated" and "not of standard quality."
The samples were forwarded to the government's regional drug testing laboratory in Chandigarh and 22 of them were determined to be 'not of standard quality' (adulterated and fake), according to the FIR.
The production licence of the firm was suspended in January after inspections at its site by the central and state drug authorities in the wake of the controversy.
On January 12, the World Health Organization (WHO) also issued a 'medical product warning', relating to two substandard (contaminated) items, detected in Uzbekistan and reported to it on December 22, 2022.