More than 50 drugs which include paracetamol, Calcium, vitamin D3 supplements, anti-diabetes pills, and high blood pressure medicines have failed quality tests by India’s drug regulator, raising safety concerns regarding their usage.The Central Drugs Standards Control Organisation (CDSCO) has declared 53 drugs as “Not of Standard Quality (NSQ) Alert, ” in its recent monthly drug alert list.State drug officers conducted a random monthly sampling of Drugs and generated the NSQ alerts.Among the 53 top-selling drugs that failed the quality check by the drug regulator are Vitamin C and D3 tablets (Shelcal), Vitamin B complex and Vitamin C soft gels, the antacid Pan-D, Paracetamol tablets (IP 500 mg), the anti-diabetic drug Glimepiride, the blood pressure medication Telmisartan, and several others.These drugs are manufactured by Hetero Drugs, Alkem Laboratories, Hindustan Antibiotics Limited (HAL), Karnataka Antibiotics & Pharmaceuticals Ltd, Meg Lifesciences, Pure & Cure Healthcare, and more.Metronidazole, a commonly used medicine for treating stomach infections that is produced by PSU Hindustan Antibiotic Limited (HAL), is also one of the failed quality tests.Shelcal, which is manufactured by Uttrakhand-based Pure and Cure Healthcare and distributed by Torrent Pharmaceuticals, also did not pass the test.A drug-testing lab in Kolkata has declared Alkem Health Science’s antibiotics, Clavam 625 and Pan D, as spurious.The lab also found Hetero’s Cepodem XP 50 Dry Suspension which is manufactured in Hyderabad and commonly prescribed for children with severe bacterial infections, to be substandard.Additionally, Paracetamol tablets from Karnataka Antibiotics & Pharmaceuticals Ltd have also raised quality concerns.The drug regulator released two lists of drugs that failed quality tests. The first list includes 48 widely used drugs, while the second adds 5 more, along with a response from the pharmaceutical companies responsible for the failed products.The column for the drug makers’ reply read, “The actual manufacturer (as per label claim) has informed that the impugned batch of the product has not been manufactured by them and that it is a spurious drug. The product is purported to be spurious, however, the same is subjected to the outcome of an investigation.”The CDSCO banned more than 156 fixed-dose drug combinations in the Indian market that are ‘likely to involve human risk to humans,’ in August. These drugs included popular fever drugs, painkillers, and allergy tablets. More than 53 commonly used medicines including Paracetamol and Shelcal, fail the drug regulator’s quality test.
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