ISLAMABAD: An unprecedented surge in demand for hand sanitizers in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic has exposed weaknesses in the regulatory system in the country where no official agency is responsible for its quality standard and pricing mechanism, it emerged on Saturday.

Minister for Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhary has apparently taken the lead to curb the sale of substandard hand sanitizers, while the product does not fall under the domain of any government department.

Turning to social media on Friday, the minister tweeted that sample testing by Pakistan Standards and Quality Control Authority (PSQCA) showed that 23 brands of sanitizers being sold in the market were “not in comformity with WHO standards, we have advised health departments to remove these brands from stores”.

Interestingly, the ministry for science and technology has yet to adopt the new international standards recommended for hand sanitizers in the wake of global pandemic, while the media-savvy minister’s move also indicated that he had not obtained information from relevant departments of his ministry that hand sanitizers did not fall in PSQCA’s domain.

Mr Chaudhary did not respond to the query, but a senior official of the ministry said that quality standards were not set by the World Health Organization (WHO). It only gives guidelines, while most of the product standards in Pakistan have been adopted from the “American Society for Testing and Materials” (ASTM), established in 1898. “In the wake of the global pandemic, new standards have been issued by the ASTM to all countries that have agreements with them including Pakistan,” the official said.

PSQCA or DRAP?

The PSQCA has only 105 items under its mandate to meet “Pakistan Standards” at its website, which includes a number cosmetic and consumer items such as toothpaste, skin cream, shampoo, hair dyes, toilet soaps, tea-whitener, packed milk etc.

Cosmetics manufacturers seek details of rules, standards to clear ambiguities

However, the list does not contain sanitizers.

Meanwhile, a senior PSQCA official acknowledged that there were no standards for sanitizers with the authority. As this product was a “disinfectant”, it was under the domain of Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP), the official added.

In response to the query, a senior DRAP official said disinfectants came under the domain of cosmetics division of DRAP, but it covered only surface disinfectants and equipment disinfectants. “Human disinfectants [hand sanitizers] were not the domain of DRAP. That is why none of anti-bacterial products including Dettol sanitizer was registered with DRAP,” said a senior DRAP official.

However, the official said, there was only one disinfectant, HiClean, registered with DRAP and the circumstances led them to launch sanitizers, too.

Mushroom growth of sanitizers

While the Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP) initiated a preliminary inquiry into the mushroom growth of sanitizers in the country, an official explained, “Our domain is limited to the protection of consumers only, [so that] there should not be any deceptive marketing of any kind.”

For this, the official said, a CCP team would pick samples from the market and get the sanitizers tested in various labs to determine that all claims made at the label were fulfilled.

Sanitizer tests had been conducted at the labs of PSQCA and Pakistan Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (PCSIR), but at the same time a senior PCSIR official said that Pakistan could only check the contents of any soap or sanitizer.

“But there is no lab – at least in the civil public sector to perform microbiology test to show that 99 per cent germs were killed after using any sanitizer, which is the standard test,” the official said, “possibly that is why we do not have any standards for sanitizers.”

Standards, rules related to sanitizers

Amid the ambiguity, cosmetic manufacturers in the country wrote a letter to the PSQCA seeking details of the standards and rules regarding sanitizers in Pakistan and the list of approved imported sanitizers.

“We have asked them to inform us when sanitizers of any multinational company was lab tested,” said Mian Shafeeq, chairman of the Pakistan Cosmetics Manufacturers Association, adding that the prevailing system was encouraging wrongdoings because none of the agencies would have interfered if locally manufactured sanitizers had fake labels showing that they were imported products.

Published in Dawn, April 5th, 2020