New Delhi |HLive
The government of India has banned more than 300 combination medicines.
The medicines also include two most used syrups for cold and cough which were sold illegally in the country. The fixed drug combinations which include pain killers, anti-diabetic medicines are there.
The prohibition of such drugs will affect on retail market of famous pharma brands. MNCs like Pfizer and Abbott and domestic companies including Alkem, Ipca and MacLeods.Top brands which will face a ban include popular analgesics Zerodol and Sumo, dermatology drug Panderm Plus, anti-diabetic medicine Tripride, and gastro-intestinal drug Zenflox, besides cough syrups Phensedyl and Corex.
The most of the companies will move to court against this step of government as sources said.
Taking the drug industry by surprise, the health ministry in a notification on March 12 has prohibited the manufacture, sale and distribution of nearly 350 FDCs with immediate effect. A fixed dose combination contains two or more drugs combined in a fixed ratio of doses, and available in a single dosage form.
In 2014, India set up a committee to review more than 6,000 combinations that had entered the market based only on state regulators’ approval. Policymakers gave pharmaceutical companies a chance to retroactively prove the safety and efficacy of these drugs by submitting data on their drugs.
The committee was tasked with classifying the drugs into rational, irrational, and those that need further studies, said KL Sharma, a joint secretary at the health ministry.
