Govt to bring in barcodes to fight fake drug menace

In a bid to weed out spurious drugs, manufacturers of antimicrobials, narcotic drugs, vaccines, and psychotropic substances will have to mandatorily affix barcodes or quick response (QR) codes on their product labels.

The Union health ministry is set to shortly amend the drug rules for implementing this measure, people in the know told ET.

The proposal to affix barcodes has been in the works for long, though it faced opposition from various stakeholders. A consultative meeting was held last month wherein the stakeholders raised their concerns.

However, the Drugs Consultative Committee (DCC) under the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) in a meeting this Tuesday deliberated and opined that the stakeholder concerns do not appear to be "substantial" in public interest and agreed to appropriately amend the Drugs Rules, 1945, according to the minutes of the meeting a copy of which was seen by ET.

Earlier, the drug regulator had included a few cancer drugs to mandatorily have barcodes for validating their authenticity following incidents of refilling of expensive anti-cancer drugs by criminals with counterfeits.

Criminals in collusion with hospital pharmacies were found refilling empty vials of expensive anti-cancer medicines with counterfeit drugs. These fake drugs were then mixed with genuine stocks and sold to unsuspecting cancer patients, putting their lives at risk.

The regulator had made it mandatory for companies to have barcodes on the top 300 brands, so that information such as manufacturing licence and batch number can be accessed upon scanning. These drugs include widely-used analgesics, pain relievers, anti-platelet, vitamin supplements, blood-sugar lowering medicines and contraceptive tablets.

"The move was to ensure authenticity of drugs and enable tracing," said a government official, on the condition of anonymity.

Brands identified by the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority include Dolo, Saridon Fabiflu, Ecosprin, Limcee, Sumo, Calpol, Corex syrup, Unwanted 72, and Thyronorm. They were shortlisted based on their moving annual turnover value based on data from market researcher Pharmatrac.

The government had been trying to introduce QR codes since 2011. It however couldn't proceed with the plan following concerns by pharma companies and lobby groups, before it was eventually implemented in 2023.