Is your family’s health important to you? Imagine a scenario where your mother has been coughing for 3 to 4 days. You buy some medicine hoping it will cure the cough, but the next morning, they’re unresponsive and cold to the touch. Before you reach the hospital, it’s too late.

You would be like the parents of twelve children of Kashmir who died in 2019 due to the intake of toxic cough syrup. This incident was highly publicized, but many such incidents never gained national attention. This heartbreaking incident reflects a major issue in India: a severe quality disaster in medicine.

The general Indian mindset regarding medicine is limited to the doctor’s prescription. Once prescribed, we hardly bother to recheck it at the pharmacist’s shop or verify its dosage, quality, SOP, etc. Even big, giant pharmaceutical companies often fail at random market surveys conducted by the government. This means companies like Sun & Cipla are listed alongside no-name companies when it comes to sample failure. Personal fitness occurs when you can function properly, and medicine fitness ensures medicine functions properly. For all our failings in personal fitness, we turn to medicine, but we never ask, “Is this medicine fit?” By the end of this blog, you will be able to understand how to assess the quality of your medicine, and you will be able to differentiate whether your medicine is fit for use or not.

Table of Contents

What is Medicine Fitness?

The post-Covid era was the time to rejoice and meet our near and dear ones. I still remember gossiping with my closest friend about a meet-up, as she lived 200 km away from me. It had already been 2 years seeing her, and we both were very excited for the gathering. I was in such a hurry to leave that I skipped getting my car serviced, thinking it would be fine. After all, the engine had barely been used in the past couple of years. But after driving 150 km, my car suddenly stopped. Stranded in the middle of nowhere, I set out to find a mechanic. After a long search, I finally found one, and he discovered that the brake fluid was low, causing the brakes to fail and the car to stop.

Although cars are designed to help us reach our destination, I drove the car without having it inspected. How many of us do the same when consuming medicine? Now you may say that medicines aren’t cars, we get them brand new, and over time they wear out. You wouldn’t buy a car if it didn’t work. But unlike the car, you can’t actually see if the medicine is working; you have to trust the manufacturer.

The government of India, responsible for overseeing drug quality, requires pharma companies to submit quality reports of their manufactured medicine monthly. Due to government dysfunction, nearly all batches are available on the market before any quality reports are shared. That is “if” they are shared. Additionally, the same people who create the medicine also create the quality reports. Why should we trust the manufacturer, especially when so many samples fail in the random samples drawn by the CDCSO?

Click here to view the full Report

To solve this problem, SayaCare tests all generic medicine before it is made available to the public. We take medicine that the manufacturer has tested in their labs to further test them in an independent laboratory that has its National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL) accreditation for good laboratory practice.

Below is the attached image of a sample report for medicines provided on SayaCare

You can also read more about Jan Aushadhi (Click here)

What are NABL-Accredited Labs, And Why is Their Accreditation Important?

According to the National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL), “it is an accreditation body, with its accreditation system established in accordance with ISO/IEC 17011.” Do you remember Vinesh Phogat? Yes, the Indian wrestler who was disqualified for being overweight at women’s 50 kg wrestling at the Paris Olympics 2024. Think of it like the qualification rules of the Olympics, such as how Vinesh Phogat, the Indian wrestler, was barred from participating in the 50 kg category at the Paris 2024 Olympics for being overweight. Just like athletes are required to meet world-class standards to compete, NABL accreditation ensures that only the best laboratories are recognized. These accredited labs provide quality certificates, ensuring high standards are met.

NABL-accredited labs providing quality certificates can also differ; you see, a lab located in an urban area is like a state-of-the-art hospital in a big city, equipped with all the facilities and the best staff. Whereas a lab located in a rural area is like a small clinic, functional but without the advanced tools to provide the same quality of precision.

Fitness Check: The Crucial Tests Your Medicine Must Pass

Just as we need to maintain our physical fitness, medicines must also be in optimal condition to work effectively. The active ingredients in a medicine work only when they are “fit.” Imagine if you fractured one of your legs, would you be able to move? The same applies to medicine: if it is defective, it will not show a therapeutic effect. That’s where the concept of medicine fitness comes into play.

Medicine must undergo various tests mentioned in pharmacopoeia, bible for pharmacy practitioners, as it provides standards for drug safety and quality. Every country has its own pharmacy. India has its own with the name Indian pharmacopeia. It contains a list of tests that will determine a medicine’s quality, which will ultimately impact its potency and effectiveness—in simple terms, the effect it will provide in the body. Following are the tests that a medicine should undergo before reaching you:

(A) Quality

Identification Test: a preliminary test done to ascertain the presence of active ingredients in the medicine.

Uniformity of content

Related substance test

Uniformity of weight

(B) Potency and Efficiency

Assay
Dissolution
Disintegration
Average weight
Average fill weight

To read about these tests in detail click here.

Conclusion

Medicine fitness might be a very new concept but questioning your medicine quality is very important in today’s world. People generally have a misconception in their minds that branded medicine is better than generic ones, but this is not true. On July 2024, CDSCO declared Cipla’s tamuslosin and dutasteride tablets not of standard quality due to their insufficiency in complying with the purity standard. At SayaCare, we go a step further. We purchase medicine directly from the manufacturer after they have conducted the quality test and send the batches to independent NABL-accredited labs for double confirmation of the quality, which we provide to the customer every time they order a medicine from us.

Through this blog, you might have understood why some medicines prescribed to you by a doctor may not show the necessary effects because they might not meet the required quality standards. By asking for the fitness report of your medicine, you can prevent unexpected side effects and ensure the treatment works as intended.