2100 units but no ?checks?

LICENCES HAVE been issued to 2100 units to manufacture ayurvedic drugs, but the State doesn’t have a properly equipped laboratory or expertise to test or detect adulteration in such medicines.

The issue has assumed significance in the wake of allegations of adulteration or poor quality ayurvedic medicines manufactured and supplied by the Divya Yog Pharmacy of Swami Ramdev.

It seems that Uttar Pradesh Ayurvedic and Unani Medicine Department are hardly concerned about the quality of ayurvedic drugs sold here. Though samples are being collected by drug inspectors and dispatched to Ayurvedic and Unani Government Analyst Laboratory regularly, but a majority of the samples are thrown in the dustbin. This is because the laboratory is not equipped to test drugs.

The laboratory is running in a dilapidated building located near the Lal Bahadur Shastri Bhawan (Anexxe). Even a school laboratory will put the analyst laboratory to shame. There is hardly any instrument to test drugs.

An official revealed that even basic chemicals had not been supplied to the laboratory, what to talk about the instruments. “Long back we had urged senior officials to install atomic absorption spectrophotometer and high-pressure liquid chromatographic for the analysis of the drug, but in vain,” he said.

Ayurvedic doctors feared that Bal Jeevan Ghutti manufactured by some units were toxic and may threaten the lives of infants. But the sample is lying in the laboratory for the last several months as the government analyst has expressed inability to test the drug. On the other hand the doctors said that manufacturers were mixing steroids in liver syrups.

Ayurvedic officials received another complain that ephedrine hydrochloride was being mixed in ‘Som churn’ again the officials prefer to look the other way.

Government analyst of Andhra Pradesh informed officials here that allopathic salts were being used in the drug manufactured by an ayurvedic unit in UP, but no action had been taken against that company.

Assistant drug controller Mangal Deo Trivedi said Ayurvedic and Unani Medicine Department organised regular sample collection drive in the districts. The inspectors collect 50 samples on monthly basis and sent to the laboratory for tests. Though Trivedi claimed that action had been taken against units caught selling adulterated drugs, he could not specify the number of companies on whom the whip was cracked.

Director Ayurvedic and Unani Medicine Department, Dr Raksha Goswami said, “We cannot install sophisticated instruments in a dilapidated building. The department will have a new laboratory near Tikait Rai pond. This laboratory will be fully equipped and construction work by the year-end.”

Till then, the sale of adulterated drug will continue.