I read the report below by Shiv Kumar and found it did not quite ring true. I asked a knowledgeable and experienced pharmacist friend to comment. Both viewpoints are below:
Judge for yourself. Cheers! Cecil ------------ Shiv Kumar - Journalist: Last week, I was in Goa for my business. I met a few of people from the audit departments of a few pharma companies whose plants are in Goa. After building a good rapport, one auditor confided with me that their people routinely fake test data for audit, even now after Ranbaxy and Wockhardt scare. Another audit guy who works for an MNC pharma said that their plant makes formulations for their global operations. in that, they give ingredients exactly as specified. However, they sell the same API (raw material) to Indian companies for Indian distribution (the MNC does not sell in India under its brands). There, they give lower quality ingredients, though they specify higher grade. So if the API is meant to be 60% active ingredient, it is usually 45-50% active ingredient and it is sold at cheaper prices to Indian pharma companies. Indian companies prepare tablets and sell, even though they know that the ingredient is of less than specified potency. Everybody in the industry apparently knows this open secret in Goa. A PRO of a well-known hospital in Goa told me there are some small time pharma companies who bring a couple of containers of their drugs into Goa and sell those tablets at very cheap rates to local doctors / pharmacies with strange, unknown brands. They throw parties for the doctors requesting them to write prescriptions for their brands. Once the containers are finished, they disappear. The brand or the company never comes again to the doctors. Finally, another trend in Goa medical practice: Some generic pharma companies approach big specialist doctors and offer to prepare tablets in the doctor's name!! They offer to make customised formulation with the doctor's branding. So you hear some funny brands that you never hear anywhere else. Only the other local doctors can tell that this brand is such and such doctor's brand of tablets. I took photos of some tablet strips. They were definitely not tested for anything. I know a lot about pharma industry, being involved with it for 21 years. One look at the contents and I could tell that all these ingredients cannot be put in one tablet - sort of a polypill with 38 ingredients. Some Goa doctors told me that these days, they trust medicines only if they are imported!!!! ---------------- Savio Figueiredo - Pharmacist: This is a case of a complete work of fiction created from a little fact 1. There is a huge amount of documentation work involved in the manufacture of pharmaceuticals - some important , other just donkey work. There are important parameters like the the weight of tablets manufactured, the ambient temperature, pressure & humidity and there are cleaning records. It is true that some of the documentation manipulated and just filled up, but I do not think the quality is compromised 2. Please note that the pharmacists working in the industry are decent human beings & professionals and most of them have ethics and will in no way allow such sub-standard products to the manufactured. I have worked in the manufacturing and now have good friends in the manufacturing quality control & quality assurance depts. They will in no way partake, support and allow such blatant criminal acts. 3. That Doctors are hand in gloves in the industry is a universal fact and direct money transfer is involved forget about gifts, parties and foreign trips I am in the process of compiling info about the mess in Goa and will shortly give it a suitable journalist for investigation and public disclosure -----------------
