To mitigate the risk of consuming fake medicines, the government will soon implement a ‘track and trace’ mechanism for top drugmakers to prevent the use of substandard and counterfeit products.
According to a Times of India report, around 300 top drugmakers will be required to include barcodes or quick response (QR) codes on primary packaging labels. Antibiotics costing more than Rs 100 per strip are expected to be included.
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Track and trace your medicines:
The proposed mechanism will allow customers to scan a QR code to access a government website.
Furthermore, these codes will authenticate the following information about the drug: identification code, proper and generic name of the drug, brand name, name and address of the manufacturer, batch number, manufacturing date, expiry date, and manufacturing licence number.
Consumers will be able to enter a unique ID code into the government portal and track it using their mobile phones.
In the first phase, approximately 300 top-selling medicines will have barcodes printed on primary packaging.
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While the lunch of this mechanism is still weeks away, this system is expected to increase costs by 3-4 per cent.
According to sources, the centre is trying to establish a central database organisation where consumers may obtain data via a single bar code provider for the whole sector.
Approximately 10 per cent of medical items in low- and middle-income nations are substandard or faked, according to data from the World Health Organization (WHO), but such incidents occur everywhere.
