The country is being wrongly projected as a guinea pig for human clinical trials in the medical field but on the contrary, we are behind other countries in this regard, said Surinder Singh, Drugs Controller General of India.

"Around 1 lakh human clinical trials happen all over the world in a year. Among these, 52,000 trials happen in USA alone. Even Canada is home to large number of such trials whereas only 1.2% of these trial take place in India," he informed.

Singh was the chief guest at a national seminar on 'Regulatory Challenges- Global Pharmaceutical Market', organised by the Indian Pharmaceutical Association on Saturday in the city.

Singh said that a website will be launched soon which would make clinical trials a transparent procedure as it would contain all the previous and present information of the trials and the companies involved in it.

Accepting the fact that there were flaws in the system with respect to regulation of drugs, he said the government was working towards strengthening it. "We are short of manpower or infrastructure in regulating or controlling drugs. Hence the efforts are on to strengthen the state and central drugs control departments," he said and added: "300-400 crores have been released for the state drugs departments." He also said that a significant number of drug inspectors and laboratory specialists are being employed in the state and central drug departments along with the constitution of a new task force.

Singh expressed concerns over the presence of spurious drugs which were affecting the nation.

"We have been getting many letters from the Indian embassies abroad on the spurious drugs imports and its quality. This is bringing a bad reputation to the country." He also informed that UID bar codes will be made compulsory for all medicines soon to authenticate their quality. Also, he said, that there was a proposal to start auditing the foreign pharmaceutical companies which import their medicines into the country.

Speaking on the occasion, RP Meena, director general of Drugs and Copyrights, Andhra Pradesh appealed to the pharmaceutical companies to set up their manufacturing units in the backward areas of the state.

"Many pharma companies are moving to the himalayan states like Himachal pradesh, Uttarakhand and Jammu and Kashmir to set up their plants.

But they should concentrate on setting them up in the backward areas of AP too as this would provide employment to about 60% of the local population," he said.

Delivering the key note address, K Anji Reddy, chairman, Reddy's laboratories felt that there should be more focus on the availability and awareness of generic medicines as it would be helpful in providing cost effective treatment for the common man.