Unlicensed medicines factory shut down in India

The FDA in the Indian state of Haryana has shut down an illicit factory suspected of manufacturing, packaging, and distributing medicines without a license.

The facility in the Kharkhoda district of the city of Sonepat was raided by FDA officials, who discovered a large number of potentially falsified versions of oral drugs that labelling claimed were made by various pharmaceutical manufacturers.

A man has also been detained in connection with the investigation – named in local media reports as Yogesh Kumar – and manufacturing machinery including a compressor, capsule fillers and blister packaging units, along with printers used to produce labels. Labels for common drugs including antibiotics azithromycin and cefixime and gastrointestinal therapy pantoprazole were also seized.

The operation comes in the wake of a report by the All India Organisation of Chemists and Druggists (AIOCD) that suggests there has been a 50 per cent rise in the number of counterfeit and substandard medicines encountered in retail settings since the pandemic to a level of nearly 15 per cent of the total domestic market.

It also follows alarming reports that the QR-based coding system designed to protect domestic medicines from falsification is being routinely compromised, allowing potentially hazardous medicines to find their way into the hands of patients.