PESHAWAR, June 27: Government’s failure to provide adequate staff and facilities has adversely affected the performance of the drug quality control board in the NWFP, health officials say.

The government set up Quality Control Boards (QCB) in all the four provinces under the Drug Act of 1976 with a view to checking the quality of drugs before these are marketed. Its main task is to test the contents of any drug sample which is sent by the drug testing laboratory as fake, spurious, expired or unregistered.

The manufacturers or chemists can contest the report of the drug testing laboratory (DTL) by moving the QCB, which after analysing the samples, sends its findings to the drug court. The drug court then decides such cases.

The QCB is currently in a deplorable condition as it doesn’t even have necessary equipment and chemicals required for drug analysis.

Under the act, the board is supposed to be 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.

A QCB official said that they had raised over Rs20 million in 2005 as penalties from the drug manufacturers and chemists and about 100 cases had been sent to the drug court since January 2006. The amount collected as penalties went to the federal government, he added.

Under to the act, 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 acted 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, 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 were then sent to the DTL for analysis.

The QCB official said the shortage of drugs inspectors had hampered the performance of the board. Some of the inspectors have to visit more than one district. Districts of Upper and Lower Dir along with Chitral are supervised by only one drug inspector. Mansehra and Kohistan districts were also managed by one inspector. So is the case with districts of Shangla and Mingora.

The situation in Fata is more serious as there is no inspector for all tribal units which are responsible for supplying smuggled Indian and Iranian medicin to all parts of the province.

The official said other provinces had got separate secretariats, with senior drug inspectors dealing with all 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, he added.