DCGI sets up committee to examine label claims of products sold as multi-vitamins
Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) has
set up an expert committee to examine the validity of the claims made on the
labels of some of the high profile vitamin supplements marketed in the country
for some years. The committee would evaluate the claims made on the ingredients
of these products to help the consumer determine the intended therapeutic or
prophylactic use of the products.
DCGI has formed an 8-member committee for the
purpose to review these products which are currently classified as food products
with exemption from stringent marketing and pricing rules. Among the 10
products that are currently being examined are Pfizer's 'Ferradol', Alkem Pharma's 'A to Z'
and Sun Pharma's 'Revital'.
This move will not only help to bring
effective regulations of the products but also correct the anomaly of
multivitamins getting marketed as dietary supplements. Said Dr G N Singh, DCGI,
"These relate to some of the borderline issues with claims that these
multi-vitamin products are not properly labelled. The expert committee is
expected to clear the confusion whether the labelling on products is a
marketing gimmick or is proper as per the requirements for its intended use to
be defined as a drug or food. The issue has been flagged to the DCGI office in
the past also and the expert group will soon come out with the scientific
rationality for its better regulation."
He further said that this will help ascertain
that the products and ingredients marketed are labeled on the basis of their
intended effects on the human body whether therapeutic or prophylactic and to
help them to be classified as drugs, vitamins or food. If the products under
scrutiny offer therapeutic claims then they will fall under drugs. The
committee will suitably examine the same and come out with a report soon.
Vitamins are widely used as dietary
supplements. They are commonly prescribed by physicians as a concomitant
medication for mild illness to severe chronic illnesses. It is believed that
they help in enhancing immunity, improve well being and aid in faster recovery
of the illness. Vitamins are defined as organic substances that must be
provided in small quantities because they either cannot be synthesised de novo
in human body or their rate of synthesis is inadequate for maintenance of health.
They are also self-prescribed by healthy people; for enhancing their health,
supplementing nutrition and prevention of minor ailments.
India's nutraceutical market is estimated to
be close to $2 billion. The blurred line between drug and food supplements
surfaced in 2009 when the drug price regulator National Pharmaceutical Pricing
Authority (NPPA) said that pharma firms are marketing drugs as food supplements
to escape the price control. In a letter to the health ministry in the past, it
cited the example of food supplements such as Ranbaxy's Revital and
Germany-based Merck KgaA's vitamin E product Evion, which, it said, were
earlier getting marketed as drugs.
Source: http://www.pharmabiz.com/NewsDetails.aspx?aid=90980&sid=1
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