Union Health Minister Dr Mansukh Mandaviya inaugurates Chintan Shivir on ‘Drugs: Quality Regulations & Enforcements’
Union Minister of State for Health
& Family Welfare, Dr Bharati Pravin Pawar and Union Minister of State for
Chemical & Fertilizers Bhagwanth Khuba also attend the Chintan Shivir
The Chintan Shivir will deliberate on pathways for cohesive and synergistic
approaches for building robust and resilient regulatory systems: Dr Mansukh
Mandaviya
“It is of critical importance to ensure that regulatory mechanisms of the
country are of impeccable standards, and sustainable”
“Let us ensure that India’s Regulatory systems are the best in the world”
Health Secretaries & Drug Regulators from States/UTs, members from
industry, representatives from NITI Aayog, FSSAI, ICMR participate in the
brainstorming conclave
Union
Minister of Health & Family Welfare and Chemicals & Fertilisers Dr
Mansukh Mandaviya inaugurated a two days Chintan Shivir on “Drugs: Quality
Regulations & Enforcement”, here today. He was joined by Dr Bharati Pravin
Pawar, Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare, Bhagwanth Khuba,
Minister of State for Chemical and Fertilisers, Dr VK Paul, Member (Health),
NITI Aayog and Shri Sanjay Bhatia, Lokayukta, Upa-Lokayukta Maharashtra. Health Secretaries & Drug Regulators from
various States/UTs are participating in the brainstorming conclave.
In his inaugural address, Dr
Mansukh Mandaviya underlined the focus of the deliberative forum, “The Chintan Shivir is a platform for all the stakeholders
in the pharma and health sectors to deliberate on pathways for cohesive and
synergistic approaches for building robust and resilient regulatory systems.
Various agencies across the Centre and states, public-private divide form
important components of ensuring that pharmaceuticals manufactured in the
country and consumed by domestic and international consumers are of the highest
quality and adhere to standard global manufacturing protocols. This will ensure
that India’s fame as “Pharmacy of the World” is upheld and we provide pharma
products of the highest quality to the consumers”.
The Union Health Minister
highlighted that “it is of critical importance to ensure that the regulatory
mechanisms of the country are of impeccable standards which are sustained
over time and space. This is possible when the Central Ministries and state
bodies work in a spirit of cooperative federalism, building on the strengths of
one another and working jointly to remove loopsholes in the regulatory
systems”. He encouraged the participants to share their knowledge and insights
from their field level experience to enrich the discussions over the two days
of collaborative brainstorming. “The challenges we face can be
collaboratively addressed by pooling of our collective experience. The manthan at the end of these two days
will provide rich knowledge to build strong, sturdy, resilient and people-
friendly mechanisms”, he stated.
“How can we ensure
that the confidence of the consumers of pharmaceuticals manufactured in India
is upheld? I urge all the stakeholders to steadfastly work towards making the
Indian drugs regulatory system among the best in the world, which could be
emulated by other countries”, he exhorted the participants.
The Chintan Shivir is organised by
the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) in collaboration with
the Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP). The event brought together all the
stakeholders viz; MoHFW, DoP,
States/UTs Health Secretaries, States/UTs Drug Controllers, Industry
associations etc. on a common platform. The participants at the conclave will brainstorm on various
facets of producing a sturdy and resilient regulatory system. These include
sessions on building of trust and confidence on quality of drugs in the
domestic and global market; review predictability; transparency &
accountability in the regulation of quality of drugs; effective enforcement of
quality, safety and efficacy at the field level; ensuring compliance to Indian
pharmacopeia & standards; to develop robust network for Pharmacovigilance
and Materiovigilance programs; creation of a unified IT platform for all regulatory
activities; to assess regulatory capacity across the States and Centre along
with to promote ‘Ease of Doing Business’; and capacity building at the level of the States and National
Regulators for regulation of pharmaceuticals and medical devices.
The
participants expressed their gratitude to the Union Health Minister for
inviting them to this brainstorming session and providing them the unique
opportunity to share their thoughts, suggestions and insights to build a
national pharma regulatory framework which could be upheld as the best globally.
Rajesh Bhushan, Union
Health Secretary, S Aparna, Union Pharma Secretary, Dr Rajiv Bahl, Secretary,
Department of Health Research, S Gopalakrishnan, Special Secretary, Union
Health Ministry, G Kamala Vardhana Rao, CEO, FSSAI, Dr Atul Goel, Director
General of Health Sciences and Dr Rajeev Raghuvanshi, Drug Controller General
of India were present on the occasion. Rajiv Wadhawan, Joint Secretary,
Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Dr N Yuvaraj, Joint Secretary,
Ministry of Chemical & Fertilizers and other senior officers and
representatives from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, NITI Aayog,
NPPA, DGHS, ICMR, NIPERs, Central
Drug Laboratories also participated in the two-day long conference.