PESHAWAR, Jan 22: Poor infrastructure and staff shortages have affected the performance of the drug quality control board, health officials told Dawn. The board does not have necessary equipment and chemicals required for drug analysis. Boards were established in all four provinces under the Drug Act of 1976 with the purpose of checking drug quality before they were marketed and ensuring that consumers had access to quality medicines.

The main task of the QCB is to re-analyse any drug sample which is designated as fake, spurious, expired or unregistered by the drug testing laboratory (DTL).

In case manufacturers or chemists want to contest the DTL report, they bring their cases to the QCB which provides its findings to the drugs court.

The court then decides the cases on the QCB’s recommendations. At present, the QCB exists only on paper, because there is no one to run its affairs properly.

A QCB official said an amount of over Rs20 million was raised in 2002 in penalties from 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.

During the years 2004 and 2005, the QCB’s performance also remained satisfactory, the official said.

He said the government should incur the amount it earned through imposition of penalties, on the uplift of the QCB to make it an effective body.

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. The official said 20 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.