Expert panel misses deadline
The committee of experts looking into the Parliamentary standing committee report which had highlighted popular medicines in India being sold without having undergone clinical trials, have missed their deadline.
While Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, who set up the committee soon after the Parliamentary Standing Committee report came up in May this year had given the expert panel two months to submit their report, the committee is yet to get back.
Mr Azad had asked the three member committee to probe into the allegations and to recommend ways to improve the drug regulators functioning. The three member panel comprising of DG, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), P.N. Tandon, president of the National Brain Research Centre and S.S. Aggarwal, former director of Sanjay Gandhi post-graduate Institute of Medical Sciences. When asked, Dr V.M. Katoch said that the committee had sought an extension.
“We are working on the procedure and it will take time so we have asked for an extension,” he told this newspaper.
He also added that the committee is not questing the findings of the parliamentary standing committee report but is reviewing the allegations.
“We are reviewing the report and are looking at the mechanism to be adopted in furture,” he added.
The parliamentary committee had alleged irregularities and lapses in clearing new drugs without conducting clinical trials.
The committee had also alleged a collusion between the Central Drug Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO), which oversees the licensing, marketing and trials of new drugs.
Soon after the report, Mr Azad constituted a committee to study the validity of the scientific and statutory basis adopted for approval of new drugs without conducting clinical trials.
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