Rajasthan State government has decided to build three more drug testing laboratories in the state at Udaipur, Jodhpur and Bikaner to enhance the capacity of sampling and testing of medicines in the state.
An amount of Rs.18 crore has been allocated by the state government for this purpose and another Rs.10 crore have been proposed in the current budget. Currently, there is only one drug testing laboratory in the state which is located at Jaipur and the state suffers a backlog of testing 2900 samples till date.
At present, the drug testing lab at Jaipur gets around 300 samples every month and testing of samples takes one month to three months time. Says an official from the Rajasthan Drug Control Department, “Around 60, 000 brands of drugs are available in the market and drug samples are collected based on the random survey.
The need for an effective drug testing mechanism comes at a time when the Jaipur Lab’s biologic testing infrastructure is being revamped. The state government has recently sent the sample for sterility testing and quality control of injectables to the apex testing lab Central Drug Laboratory (CDL), Kolkata on an urgent basis in the wake of the fact that around 155 Pepenum injections meant for animal use were allegedly administered to 28 patients at Jaipur based Government MDM Hospital.
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