Capsules of Amoxycillin, a life-saving antibiotic, manufactured by some Indian Pharmaceuticals contains no active ingredient but only starch or chalk powder.

This was disclosed at a press conference by Amitabha Saha, an M Pharm thesis student of Pharmacy Department at Ja-hangirnagar University (JU) recently.

The alarming information came out when Amitabha was conducting a research on 'General quality of Indian drugs available in Bangladesh' under

These Indian drugs are available not only in the border districts but also in city's drug centres. Amitabha collected the samples from Mitford market. Shahbag and Shantinagar in the city.

"Consumers are inclined to buy these spurious drugs as these are cheaper than Bangladeshi products", Amitabha told the journalists. While a Amoxycillin capsule manufactured by Bangladeshi pharmaceuticals costs 3.50 Tk each, an Indian capsule, illegally Coming the country at an

the supervision of Pijush Saha and Naimul Islam oi JU Pharmacy Department and Dr Jiben Roy, Head of R&D, Square Pharmaceuticals Limited.

The analysis was done using High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC), Infra red (IR) spectroscopy, Ultra-violet (UV) spectroscopy and other qualitative and quantitative tests. The results of the tests suggest that not a single mg of Amoxycillin was found in those capsules.

The manufacturers of these generic but spurious Amoxycillin capsules are Well Health Pharmaceuticals. Mumbai. Sinco Pharmaceuticals, Mumbai. Mikado Pharmaceuticals. Ahmedabad and Codak Pharmaceuticals. Mumbai, of India.

alarming flow through borders, costs only Tk 1.25 to 1.50 each, he said.

"Substandard Renitidine tablets are also in use by our consumers which are detected containing lower quantity of the ingredient" Amitabha told the conference. A 150 mg Renitidine tablet manufactured by Helix Pharma. Ghaziabad. India contains only 122mg of the ingredient, he said.

Apart from this, sub-quality raw materials from India are also available in the black market. “Alarmingly enough, the raw materials which are already produced in large quantities in Bangladesh, are also coming in from India in illegal ways,'" Amitabha said.