State drug control raids medicine store in Kestopur

Kolkata: State Drug Control conducted a raid on a medicine distributor’s store in Kestopur and examined its stock.

A four-member team of the state drug control carried out an inspection at the store and examined the batch numbers and the QR codes. It was learnt that around 1000 types of medicines were stocked at the Kestopur store and the officials of the state drug control examined the batch numbers and QR codes.

The state drug control officials earlier carried out raids in several parts of the city and the state and examined the QR codes of the medicines stocked. The state drug control officials earlier visited Bagree market and also other places and freezed medicines worth Rs 20 lakh as the QR codes did not match.

In the wake of a series of fake medicines being recovered from various parts of the state, the Directorate of Drug Control in Bengal has published phone numbers so that people can directly call at these numbers to draw the attention of the authority if they suspect any strips of medicines or bottle to be fake. The numbers are 033 2225-2213/ 033 2225-2214.

It was found that several fake medicines were found during the raid. When QR codes are scanned it says, “Does not match any documents”. Around 30 per cent of strips of medicines inside the boxes were found to be fake.

These fake medicines were mixed inside the genuine medicines. The substantial chunk of the fake and substandard medicines recovered during a raid by state and central drug control officers at a warehouse in Titagarh recently were Human Albumin ampules used for treating low blood volume (hypovolemia) and replacing albumin in patients with low albumin levels.