Distributor told to stop sale of painkiller batches

NOIDA: The drug department has asked the carrying and forwarding (C&F) agent of Combiflam tablets in Ghaziabad to immediately stop the sale of drugs from batch No. 6 NA 0347, a sample of which failed a disintegration test conducted in the UP government’s laboratory in Lucknow.
Disintegration is the time taken by a drug to break up into granules of a minimum specified size, which is important for the tablet to start performing.It has also asked the agent to explain as to how much of the medicine from the consignment in question has been sold till now and how much is left.
Sanofi India Limited has a depot in Ghaziabad from where the medicines are supplied to entire western UP including districts like Gautam Budh Nagar, Ghaziabad, Meerut, Saharanpur, Bareilly, Muzaffarnagar, Moradabad, etc through the C&F agents.
“The company has been asked to provide a record of the sale and purchase of the batch number in question. This will help us to know where they have been supplied,” drug inspector Deepak Sharma told TOI.
A sample of the common painkiller from the batch in question, which was collected from a pharmacy in Ganga Shopping Complex of Sector 29 in July, had failed the disintegration test (DT) conducted in the UP government’s laboratory.
Meanwhile, chemists have started recalling the company’s tablets irrespective of the batch as a “precautionary measure” by the pharmacy owners, who fear infamy due to a possibility of test failure by the government.
A pharmacy owner in Noida’s Sector 27 said that since Combiflam tablets had to be recalled after failing the disintegration criteria in Maharashtra in May too, chemists have got jittery after the latest test.
“We are returning all the tablets to our wholesaler. If a sample on our counter fails the test, it gives a bad name to the pharmacy. Everybody wants to avoid that,” he said, requesting anonymity.
When asked about the same, Gautam Budh Nagar Chemists’ Association Anoop Khanna said that the chemists have been asked to recall only the medicines belonging to batch number 6 NA 0347.