Research: FIGHTING COUNTERFEIT AND SUBSTANDARD DRUGS AT PERIPHERY: THE UTILITY OF BASIC QUALITY CONTROL TESTS

Substandard and counterfeit drugs are prevalent throughout the world but developing countries are worst affected by it. At periphery, simple, practicable means of confirming the identity of drugs can be extremely valuable. The primary objective of the study was to determine the feasibility of application of the basic quality control tests described by World Health Organization and German Pharma Health Fund (GPHF)-Minilab to pharmaceutical dosage forms of commonly used drugs. The secondary objective was to compare the drugs from government supplies with commercial preparations with respect to basic quality control tests. Sixty five sample dosage forms of 23 commonly used drugs procured from dispensary of a tertiary care government hospital and a retail pharmacy were tested according to basic quality control tests namely visual inspection, disintegration test and color reactions for identification of drug substances. These tests were simple to perform, required limited resources and were reproducible. Six out of 42 samples (14.3%) of drugs from government hospital and 1 out of 23 (4.4%) commercial drugs failed color reactions. Basic quality control tests for various dosage forms can be very useful tool for primary screening of essential medicines at periphery.