FDA demands guidelines for ayurvedic drugs

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has sent a proposal to the Centre demanding it issue guidelines for ayurvedic medicines to curb malpractices under guise of claims of health benefits like weight loss, hair gain, age reversing etc. The move has come after the recent arrest of self-proclaimed scientist Munir Khan who claimed to cure HIV with a version of ayurveda.

“We have written to the Centre to issue some guidelines for ayurvedic medicines so that it can come under the purview of FDA. For allopathic medicines, there are certain rules and regulations based on which we can test and verify its ingredients. But ayurvedic medicines have no standardisation, which makes it difficult to bring them under any law,” FDA commissioner Harshdeep Kamble told The Asian Age. The commissioner admitted that the Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act is toothless and ayurvedic medicines do not come under the Drugs and Cosmetic Act too.

Last month, FDA arrested Munir Khan who was allegedly selling ayurvedic medicines claiming to cure HIV, diabetes, heart ailments, tumours, stress management and reversal of premature aging. “It was difficult for us to prove that the medicines sold by Khan were fraudulent. We checked the ingredients of the medicines and found one was missing from it. We arrested him under cheating clause else it would have been difficult to take any action against him,” Mr Kamble said.

When asked about the turnover of the ayurvedic industry, he said it is difficult to ascertain specifically but said the medical market in India is worth around Rs 1 lakh crore. “The not genuine companies sell products with different names. One company will sell the product under one name for six months and then it will change the name and start selling again. There are many companies which sell products without any licence but it is difficult to control them in the absence of any law and hence we are pushing before the Centre to have some guidelines,” he said.

Mr Kamble also said that the FDA infrastructure should be strengthened to address such cases. The FDA also faces staff crunch restricting its functioning, he added.