Terming drug testing process as an essential requirement to save people from spurious and substandard drugs, Additional Chief Secretary Punjab Shamail Ahmad Khawaja on Tuesday said the Punjab government was going to take necessary measures to ensure good manufacturing practices in the pharmaceutical industry.

He said this during his visit to Drug Testing Laboratory (DTL) Lahore. He was accompanied by Secretary Primary & Secondary Health Ali Jan Khan, Addl. Inspector General (Special Branch) Faisal Shahkar, Director General Punjab Forensic Science Agency Dr Muhammad Ashraf Tahir, Project Director PAFDA Sohail Ashraf, Addl. Secretary Drug Control Muhammad Sohail and Addl. Secretary (Welfare) S&GAD Mudassir Riaz Malik. Director DTL Lahore Munawar Hayat gave detailed briefing about the modern facilities available in DTL, Lahore to transform it into a model drug testing laboratory along with the shortcomings which could be met with the collaboration of Punjab government.

The ACS visited all the six functional laboratories at DTL which include pure active pharmaceutical ingredients testing lab, hi-tech lab having the most modern facility of HPLC chromatography and witnessed the analytic process of medicines from bar coding to the submission of final results.

The delegation was informed that 9089 drug samples had been received in DTL Lahore from various public sector hospitals pharmacies during the current calendar year out of which only 301 samples had been rejected on account of being out of specification.

The ACS emphasised the need to focus on "over the counter" sale of medicine at thousands of medical stores in every nook and corner of the province because the people at large purchased medicine for themselves from those medical stores. He promised the administration of DTL Lahore to advocate the demand of financial autonomy for all the five drug testing laboratories in Punjab.

He suggested on this occasion that the facilities for accurate testing of biological drugs like interferon, insulin, monoclonal anti-bodies, gamma globulins and other vaccines should also be provided in DTL Lahore.

Additional Chief Secretary also visited the newly established "Health Information & Services Delivery Unit" where the Project Director Kalsoom Saqib gave him detailed briefing about the performance of his new unit comprising Prescription Management Information System, Medicine Inventory & Equipment Control System and Database of ADP Schemes of Primary & Secondary Healthcare.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2017