Drugs, Diagnostics & Therapies

Chairs

Haresh Gupta

Chief Program Officer

CanKids KidsCan, New Delhi

Vikram Gota

Professor

Advanced Centre for Treatment, Research and Education, Mumbai

Goal Statement

To generate recommendation for uninterrupted supply of good quality drugs and diagnostics

Key Focus Areas

  • Random testing for drug quality.
  • Compilation of national essential medicine list- childhood cancers

Glimpses of Work

(a) Compilation of National Medicine Essential List
Context
  • To determine potential gaps of anticancer drugs for childhood cancer listed in India’s National List of Essential Medicines (NEML; 2022) as well as EMLs for states and union territories in comparison with the World Health Organization's Essential Medicines List for Children (WHO EMLc; 2023).
  • For patients with childhood cancer, disparities in the availability and inclusion of these medications on national and international essential medicines lists (EML) may mean unequal access to life-saving treatments.
Purpose
  • WHO Essential Medicines List (EML 2023) includes 64 anticancer drugs.
  • The EML for children (EMLc) features 44 anticancer drug.
  • We aim to compare WHO EMLc with Indian states and UTs and publish a paper on the same.
Status/Next Steps
  • Compiling of all available states and UTs list of anticancer drugs is done
  • Comparing of WHO EMLc with all states and UTs
  • Final analysis will be done after the compilation
(b) Random Testing for Drug Quality
Context

An overarching objective of this project is to ensure that we stock the right generics with proven quality profile in our hospital pharmacies.

Purpose
  • To compare the API content of the generics w.r.t. the innovators
  • To test whether the impurity content of the generics is within limits
  • To identify drug quality related issues in case of unexpected toxicities or frequent therapeutic failures
Status/Next Steps

Project proposal is being drafted.