Letters: Generic drug regulation

Apropos Kiran Mazumder Shaw's article "Ranbaxy a wake-up call for Indian pharma" (May 25), the penalty imposed by the US Food and Drug Administration on Ranbaxy for fraud and adulteration and its ban on products of Wokhardt's Aurangabad unit over quality concerns do not augur well for Indian generic drug makers. The government can no longer be a mute spectator. If companies are audaciously compromising on quality standards and/or resorting to adulteration while exporting to markets like the US, which follow strict regulation, then one is seriously concerned about the products that they offload in the domestic market. We need stricter regulator for the sector so that the public at large have access to quality drugs. The government should administer independent probes to find the guilty and serve exemplary punishment to people involved in corporate malpractices.

V Sridhar, Kolkata

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