Centre may soon mandate QR code authentication for more drugs and products, beyond the list of top 300 brands for which this was already stipulated, Rajeev Singh Raghuvanshi, Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI), indicated on Wednesday.

“In the first phase, the mandate for the manufacturers of the top 300 brands was to have a QR code. In the next phase, the DCGI is looking at expanding this list to a larger number of products”, Raghuvanshi said at the sidelines of the 6th CII Pharma & Life Sciences Summit in the capital. 

DCGI is also implementing this QR code policy for vaccines as it believes a similar approach is required there. “Recently, the DCGI has also notified that all vaccines should have a QR code similar to drugs,” Raghuvanshi added.

Union Health Ministry had in November 2022 notified that it was mandatory for pharmaceutical companies to print QR codes on the packaging of the top 300 drug brands. The deadline for compliance was set for August 1, 2023.

The QR codes are designed to help consumers verify the authenticity of the medicines they purchase, providing an additional layer of protection against counterfeit drugs in the market.

Asked about regulation of social media influencers, Raghuvanshi said that it was for the States to take action as per the Drugs and Magic Remedies Act.

Substandard Medicines

Meanwhile, Raghuvanshi said that authorities have taken steps to recall the 45 drugs that were last month listed in Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation’s (CDSCO) monthly list of substandard or fake medicines sold in India. He said action had also been initiated on the manufacturers of five identified spurious drugs.

Raghuvanshi said that CDSCO has already ordered a recall of drugs.

He noted that the recent reports claiming “50 fake medicines” had been banned were “completely inaccurate,” clarifying that no drugs have been banned.

“They are not all fake medicines. They were ‘not of standard quality’ medicines. There is a difference between the two. Only five of them were spurious in our terminology, which you can call fake”, he said.

Elaborating the process followed by CDSCO, Raghuvanshi said “On our part, what we do as a process is put all these on recall. So the day we get the information about the ‘not of standard quality’ or ‘spurious,’ the immediate next step is to inform the manufacturers and tell them to recall the drugs, and that’s the process.”

He highlighted that government and regulatory authorities are empowered under the  Drug and Cosmetics Act to address issues related to fake medicines and spurious drugs. “There are set procedures that are followed once we detect them, and we take them to a logical conclusion”, Raghuvanshi added.

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