Itanagar: During laboratory tests, the quality of 33 drugs which supplied to various government hospitals and stores in Arunachal Pradesh were found to be of sub-standard quality.

Assistant Drug Controller Gebomb Tayeng said on Tuesday that, 355 samples collected during 2014-15 and 2015-16 from various government stores and hospitals for analysis, from which test reports of 238 drugs were declared safe and 33 medicines were found not of standard quality (NSQ).

With regard to 371 samples collected from markets, the quality of nine drugs out of 314 tested was found to be NSQ while results of 57 are awaited.

According to the test reports received on July 12, the percentage of NSQ for government procured medicines was 13.86 % while it stood at 2.87 % for drugs collected and tested from markets.

Tayeng said, “The high percentage of NSQ drugs under government procurement shows that quality of drugs has been compromised by the medicine procuring agencies and suppliers, thereby ignoring the quality, efficacy and safety of patients”.

“It has been observed that most of the government drugs procuring agencies do not follow the norms and guidelines such as entry of batch number, expiry date, name of manufacture in the bill/challan,” he added.

Actions are being taken against erring firms and six cases have been filed in a court of Yupia, headquarters of Papum Pare district.