PHA-Exchange> Death Penalty Prescribed for Makers of Fake Medicine (India).....

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From: "UNNIKRISHNAN PV (Dr)" <unnikru at yahoo.com>

HEALTH-INDIA
Death Penalty Prescribed for Makers of Fake Medicine

Inter Press Service

By Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Aug 14 (IPS) - The death penalty again hangs over the denizens of
Bhagirath Palace, a sprawling mediaeval structure in the old quarter of the
Indian capital, once infamous for political intrigue and now home to the
buccaneers who run a sizeable chunk of the world's industry for spurious
pharmaceutical drugs.

Every day in the warrens that make up Bhagirath Palace and the surrounding
markets of Chandni Chowk (Moonlight Square), deals worth millions of dollars
are struck for consignments of such drugs as ranitidine, used for ulcers,
and paracetamol at a fraction of what chemists would sell them across the
country.

But tired of complaints from patients who have suffered the ill effects of
consuming chalk instead of medicines, the Indian government announced this
week plans to usher in laws that include the death penalty for people caught
dealing in fake drugs.

''The death penalty is certainly not too great for people who are interested
only in profiteering, the result of which is mass murder,'' Union Health
Minister Sushma Swaraj told IPS.

Swaraj's hands were strengthened by the report of a special committee drawn
from several ministries and chaired by the director general of the Council
of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSI), R A Mashelkar, which called for
stringent action.

''The penalty for sale and manufacture of spurious drugs that cause grievous
hurt or death should be enhanced from life imprisonment to death,'' the
Mashelkar Committee recommended in its report.

If the committee's recommendations are followed in the promised legislation,
offences related to spurious drugs would be made non-bailable -- and no bail
would be granted inside of three months.

Ravi Kant, a senior official in the drugs control department, thinks that
the new laws might just provide the right deterrent. ''Over the last 20
years we have not been able to make single case stick.''

One of the best known cases is that of P K Mehngi, owner of the Duefil
Laboratories that runs out of Bhagirath Palace but has manufacturing units
in Jaipur city, capital of western Rajasthan state.

Mehngi was first arrested in 1979 on charges of manufacturing fake drugs.
But he not only managed to get out on bail, but also resumed business while
the case has remained pending in the courts. The new legislation could be
bad news for Mehngi.

Kant said one of the many difficulties with prosecuting the robber barons of
the industry lay in the near impossibility of proving that the death of a
patient was caused by the use of a fake drug -- especially if it is made out
of harmless chalk.

There were other problems too, such as the inadequacy of India's existing
Drugs and Cosmetics Act of 1940. It does not use the word 'counterfeit',
which is commonly used to describe spurious drugs across the world.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), counterfeit medicine is
that which is deliberately or fraudulently mislabeled with respect to
identity and/or source.

Counterfeiting can apply to both branded and generic products and
counterfeit products may include products with the correct ingredients, with
insufficient active ingredients or fake packaging.

The committee noted the existence of counterfeit drugs that are exact copies
of known brands and which have, so far, been regarded as a problem of the
pharmaceutical industry rather than consumers who benefit from their cheap
prices.

Not surprisingly, the main drivers behind the Mashelkar Committee and the
proposed legislation are 11 major players grouped together as the Indian
Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA).

In a presentation made to the committee last month, Harinder Sikka, a senior
executive from the 250 million U.S. dollar pharmaceutical major Nicholas
Piramal, estimated the size of the spurious drug industry to be around a
billion dollars. That would make it about a fifth of the genuine industry.

Sikka also said that more than half of the country's spurious drug trade was
conducted out of the Bhagirath Palace, a fact unknown to most tourists and
local visitors who visit the walled city to gawk at the massive Red Fort and
Jama Masjid and savour treacly recipes in a maze of narrow bylanes.

Nicholas Piramal owns the 'Phensidyl' brand of cough syrup, made popular
among students and young people by counterfeit versions such as 'Phensidyl
Plus' that are laced with extra doses of the narcotic codeine.

Lalit Kumar, an executive from Wockhardt, another industry leader, says fake
or substandard drugs from India are finding their way to countries as far
afield as Vietnam and Nigeria.

India already cooperates with Nigeria in tracking down and curbing the trade
in spurious drugs originating in this country.

According to P V Unnikrishnan, campaigner for the People's Health Assembly
(PHA), what has really got the big names of the industry going is the fact
that the purveyors of fake drugs were now getting sophisticated enough to
enter the lucrative sector for lifestyle drugs.

''The point is that the fake drug industry has been growing steadily even if
we have been campaigning against it. This could not have happened except for
poor enforcement and the outright corruption of the inspector of the Drug
Control Authority (DCA),'' Unnikrishnan said.

In Unnikrishnan's opinion, the death penalty will not make any dent on the
Indian drug market, which has some 90,000 brand names floating around.

''In the end, the major pharma companies are creating artificial demands
with their lifestyle drugs and the competition (spurious drugs) is taking a
bite out of this new market -- while nobody gives a hoot about affordable
medicines for ordinary illnesses that afflict ordinary people,'' he said.
(END/IPS/AP/HE/DV/RDR/JS/03)