Telangana drug sleuths to crack down on large counterfeit drug cartels

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After unearthing counterfeit hypothyroidism drugs under the Thyronorm brand of the US drug firm Abbott and listing them under ‘Not of Standard Quality’, the Telangana Drug Control Administration (DCA) authorities are preparing to crack down on suspected large counterfeit drug cartels.

“We have seized the counterfeit Thyronorm brand thyroid medicines and found them as ‘Not of Standard Quality’ and also of resorting to certain other violations pertaining to composition,” a senior Telangana DCA official told Moneycontrol.

“Just as Abbott India brought to our notice about the counterfeit Thyronorm brand drugs being in circulation in the market, we have been receiving a series of complaints from some of the large pharmaceutical companies, both Indian and multinational, about the menace of counterfeit products that were denting their sales volumes,” said the same DCA official, who did not want to be named as he was not authorised to speak to the media.

Though most of these counterfeit drugs with brands of large pharmaceutical companies were found having the labels as manufactured by some contract manufacturing firms based out of Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Pondicherry, the Telangana DCA officials suspect that most of them were being manufactured in Karnataka and shipped to Telangana.

“It is twice during this calendar year that we seized counterfeit thyroxine sodium tablets under Thyronorm brand of Abbott with different batch series,” said the Telangana drug official quoted above. “Most of the original and genuine pharmaceutical firms are reaching out to us to seeking to arrest the menace of counterfeit medicines in circulation in the market, which was not just affecting their sales significantly but also adversely affecting their brand image.”

Though there are some 30 players in all in the Indian market for hypothyroidism drugs, Abbott India’s Thyronorm leads the market with over 50% share, which is followed by Eltroxin from GSK and Thyrox from Macleods.

When contacted, a spokesperson of Abbott India said the batches of Thyronorm mentioned in the list of Telangana DCA were confirmed to be counterfeit and were not manufactured or marketed by Abbott. Assuring that there is no quality issue with genuine Abbott Thyronorm products, the spokesperson said, it was Abbott that “proactively alerted authorities about these potential counterfeit medicines and they took necessary action.”

Abbott said it will continue its efforts to alert authorities against counterfeiters apart from extending support to customers to distinguish genuine Thyronorm packs from counterfeits.

“For example, genuine Thyronorm has an innovative flip-top pack dispenser which provides ease of use and single tablet dispensing. There is a QR code on its label, which when scanned leads to an informative landing page with a video on the benefits of the flip-top pack,” said the spokesperson.