PESHAWAR, April 4: Lack of infrastructure and shortage of staff have affected the performance of the drug quality control board, health officials said on Friday.

The Quality Control Boards were established by the government in all the four provinces under the Drug Act of 1976 with a view to checking drug quality before they were marketed and ensure availability of quality medicines to consumers.

The QCB’s main job was to re-analyse any drug sample which is reported by the drug testing laboratory as fake, spurious or expired or unregistered.

In case manufacturers or chemists want to contest the DTL report, they bring their cases to the QCB, which after analysing the samples, furnish its findings to the drug court.

The drug court then decides the cases on the recommendations of the QCB, which is in deplorable condition at present as it doesn’t even have necessary equipments and chemicals required for drug analysis.

Under the act, the QCB was to headed by the health secretary, with chairmen of departments of pharmacy and pharmacology, director of health Fata and additional secretary health as its members, but due to shortage of staff and absence of incentives for its members, the board’s remained a dormant body.

At present the QCB exists only in papers, because there is no one to run its affairs properly.

A QCB official said they raised an amount of over Rs20 million in 2002 in penalties from the drug manufacturers and chemists, whereas about 100 cases had been sent to the drug court since January 2003. The amount collected in penalties went to the federal government, he added.

According to the Drug Act 1976, the provincial law department is required to provide the QCB with the services of lawyers to represent the government in the drug court which was not done, and the federal drug inspector also acts as prosecutor in the court.

The drug court usually imposes a maximum penalty of Rs8,000 on a single outlet or a person. According to the official, the 17 drug inspectors in different districts and tribal agencies had been tasked under the prescribed law to collect samples from drug stores or manufacturing firms, which are then sent to the DTL for analysis.

About shortage of drugs inspectors, a QCB official said the situation had hampered the performance of the people involved in the drug-related duties. Some of the inspectors were supposed to visit more than one district. The districts of Upper and Lower Dir along with Chitral are supervised by one drug inspector.

Likewise, Mansehra and Kohistan district were also managed by one inspector. So is the case with the districts of Shangla and Mingora.

These districts are spread over hundreds of kilometres and were difficult to be managed by one person.

The situation in Fata is more serious, because there is no specific inspector for all tribal units, which are responsible for supplying the Indian and Iranian drugs to all parts of the province.

The official said other provinces had got separate secretariats, with senior drug inspectors dealt with all the matters relating to drugs. But in the NWFP, all such matters revolved around the secretary health, whose time was more occupied in day to day running of the department.