Ayurvedic medicines being sold without safety study: HC asks Centre to explain
The Punjab and Haryana high court on Friday sought explanation from the Centre on some Ayurvedic medicines being sold in the country without any safety study.
The Punjab and Haryana high court on Friday sought explanation from the Centre on some Ayurvedic medicines being sold in the country without any safety study.
The direction came from the single-judge bench of justice Rajive Bhalla during the hearing of a petition on the issue of the treatment and rehabilitation of drug addicts in Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh. In its submission, the Haryana government accepted that the addicts at its Karnal de-addiction centre were prescribed some untested ayurvedic medicines that the Centre had exempted from the requirement of clinical trials.
The high court bench observed that there these drugs also required safety study, since chemical inputs go into the production of the raw material for these. It further observed that once it was clear that these medicines were safe for drug and a protocol for use was in place, AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, and Homoeopathy) de-addiction centres could be established across the state.
Haryana also gave startling figures on the number of addicts in the state, reporting more than 4,800 patients admitted since January 2015, the highest number in Kurukshetra (1,026), followed by Rohtak (710).
During the hearing, the Punjab government submitted that nearly 23,000 patients had taken treatment, so far, at sixteen drug de-addiction centres across the state; and the centres in Sangrur, SAS Nagar, Tarn Taran, Bathinda, Faridkot, Fatehgarh Sahib, Jalandhar, Muktsar, Barnala and Gurdaspur could be made functional within a month. The proposals for similar centres in Fazilka, Kapurthala, Ludhiana, Rupnagar, and Nawanshahr were at different stages, it further submitted. The next hearing is on November 27.