With no government oversight, profiteering industries flood Indian markets with toxic sanitisers

11 July 2020
A worker arranges hand sanitiser bottles after the government eased a nationwide lockdown imposed as a preventive measure against COVID-19, at a plant in Changodar, Gujarat, on 14 June. Various ministries and departments issued licences for the manufacture of sanitisers, ignoring stand procedures, with no concern for safety, and flooding the market with ineffective or highly toxic sanitisers.
SAM PANTHAKY / AFP / Getty Images
A worker arranges hand sanitiser bottles after the government eased a nationwide lockdown imposed as a preventive measure against COVID-19, at a plant in Changodar, Gujarat, on 14 June. Various ministries and departments issued licences for the manufacture of sanitisers, ignoring stand procedures, with no concern for safety, and flooding the market with ineffective or highly toxic sanitisers.
SAM PANTHAKY / AFP / Getty Images

Reports by the Punjab Food and Drug Administration, dated 3 July, which The Caravan is in possession of, revealed that poisonous hand sanitisers have flooded the state and national markets amid a surge in demand during the novel coronavirus pandemic. In tests conducted on 63 samples of hand sanitisers, 36 proved to be of sub-standard quality while four samples had highly toxic levels of methanol, in quantities that could cause permanent blindness, damage to the nervous system or even death, according to the Punjab FDA. The document list out the test results of all the samples that were taken and the companies that manufactured them. “We are talking of an almost epidemic scale of poisoning over the past three and a half months and Punjab is not the only state where this is occurring,” a senior official in the Punjab FDA, who wished to remain anonymous, told me.

Following the announcement of the nationwide lockdown to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus, the health and consumer affairs departments of several states, on the advice of their central government counterparts, gave permission to an unprecedented number of hand-sanitiser manufacturers. The government authorities failed to check if several new manufacturers, many of whom had no previous experience or completely lacked testing equipment, met safety standards for the manufacture of hand sanitisers. Since early June, the Punjab FDA frequently reported that markets have seen a spate of substandard and toxic hand sanitisers to the state’s health and consumer affairs departments and the corresponding union ministries. These reports have frequently been ignored by the government bodies handing out manufacture approvals. The Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy—or AYUSH—as well as its state counterparts began giving license for the manufacture of ayurvedic sanitisers which do not fall clearly under the standards set by the Drugs and Cosmetics Act. This made it impossible for FDAs to act against toxic, ineffective and mis-advertised ayurvedic sanitisers.

The spate of ineffective and toxic hand sanitisers has been caused by a range of hasty approvals and announcements made by both central and state governments. In the rush to meet the growing demand in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, these governments ignored the usual safety standards and approval mechanisms for pharmaceutical manufacturing. On 13 March, the union ministry of consumer affairs, food and public distribution issued an order titled the Essential Commodities Order, 2020, which added masks and hand sanitisers to the essential commodities list. This order removed the usually strict quotas on manufacturing hand sanitisers, allowing any approved manufacturer to produce as much as they could. This notification was to remain in force for a period up to 30 June.

Jatinder Kaur Tur is a senior journalist with two decades of experience with various national English-language dailies, including the Indian Express, the Times of India, the Hindustan Times and Deccan Chronicle.

Keywords: coronavirus lockdown COVID-19 drugs and cosmetics act AYUSH Ministry of Consumer Affairs Pharmaceuticals
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