India has banned the sale and production of more than 300 combination drugs that were being distributed illegally.
Combination medicines, also known as "fixed dose combinations," can be desirable because they increase a patient's likelihood of complying with his or her medication regimen. Although taking one drug is a lot easier than taking several, many of the combination drugs have not been approved by the central government.
Instead, a lot of these drugs were approved on a state level despite a lack of research into their efficacy and safety, which could lead to potentially dangerous health consequences, such as misuse and addiction. In 2014, fixed dose combinations made up nearly 50 percent of all the drugs that were sold in India.
In order to crack down on this market, the country created a committee in 2014 that was placed in charge of reviewing all of these state approved combination drugs. The members of the committee will analyze the drug and divide them into one of these three categories: rational, irrational and need more studies.
Unnamed official sources said that the reviewers had classified this group of drugs under irrational. They concluded that these drugs were either not effective enough or too risky to be on the market.
"Now based on responses (and) assessment of products, more than 300 drugs have been prohibited," said KL Sharma, the joint secretary at the health ministry.
Sharma added that the ban will go into effect "in a few days" but did not provide any details on the banned medicines.
Anonymous sources have reported that two of the drugs that will be banned are cough syrups, Phensedyl and Corex, which are codeine-based.
Phensedyl, which is manufactured by the U.S. drug company Abbott Laboratories, makes up about one-third of all sales in the Indian cough syrup market. Corex, which is relatively less popular, is sold by Pfizer Inc.
There are currently more than 6,000 state approved mixed drugs that are being sold in India.
Before the announcement of the ban, Indian regulators have been pressuring drug makers to improve their regulations over their drug products in order to reduce the risk of addiction and smuggling.
