“India will never bargain on the quality of the medicines,” Union Health Minister on cough syrup tragedy

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On the 20th of June, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya addressed the authorities regarding the steps being taken in ensuring the preparation of medicine and raised his concerns over the ongoing issue that states India-based syrups are contaminated. He even made an announcement saying that India follows a zero-tolerance policy over the production of spurious medicine and that risk-based detection is done to analyze the quality of medicines.

The minister also revealed that 71 companies have been issued show-cause notices and out of which 18 firms are being ordered to seize their operations. He further added by saying that we (referring to the entire nation) are the pharmacy of the world and we guarantee the world that we are the quality pharmacy.

In February this year, a Tamil Nadu-based company Global Pharma Healthcare recalled its entire stock of eye drops as soon as it got to know that the ointments are dangerous to use. Prior to this, an official at WHO had linked the deaths of 66 and 18 children in Gambia and Uzbekistan, respectively due to the consumption of syrups from India, to this the Health Minister remarked that we had asked for facts and statements from the representative, but we were provided with no results.

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From June 1, India has issued strict restrictions over the export of medicines from the country and the companies will have to get a verification certificate from the government laboratory to ensure that all the medicines have been analyzed before getting dispatched.