Publish drug registry to avoid medical errors By Rajendra Diwe ; Indian market is flooded with thousands of brands of sound-alike and look-alike drugs. This could add to medical errors Pharma experts tell Health Ministry One generic drug is produced by different pharmaceutical companies in India with their own brand name. There are thousands of such brands available in pharmaceutical market. Remembering a vast list of drug names is always a tough task for the prescribers. Adding to this problem is the load of recollecting the correct spellings of these drugs. Drug names are many times similar in spelling and/or in phonetics; categorised as sound-alike drugs. Others look same in their formulations or packages called as look-alike drugs. These are the category of medications which may confuse the healthcare professionals right from the physician to the nurse as well as the pharmacist to be mistaken for another drug (similar looking or spelling) instead of the correct one. collectively they can be categorised as Sound-alike and Look-alike (SALA) drugs. The presence SALA drugs in the supply chain has resulted in unclear interpretation of brand names resulting in faulty dispensing across pharmacy outlets. Hence the experts in pharmaceutical field have expressed the need for the country to immediately publish and comprehensive brand name registry. The reason for SALA is because of lack of brand names database in the country. Even pharmacists are found wanting on knowledge of drug brands. A research study titled retrospective Analysis of sound alike and look alike drug incidents in tertiary care hospital published in Indian Journal of Pharmacy Practice Volume 14 Issue 2 April-June 2021 has mentioned “Medication errors reported by Clinical Pharmacists for a duration of February 2017 to February 2020 were studied to list out SALA drugs related errors and these were then evaluated. Preventive strategies were developed to avoid similar errors in future in the study set-up. Out of total 1311 errors reported during the study duration of three years 35 (2.67 %) were SALA drug incidences. Majority of the errors were dispensing errors and of near miss category 74.28% and most of 24 of the errors were due to phonetically sound alike drugs 68.57%.” Priti P Dhande Akshay V Mule and Akshay P Chaudhari the researchers mentioned “SALA drugs is a daily challenge to pharmaceutical marketers and pharmacists. It is a well-known market problem to which pharmacists should be specially alert.” During these pandemic times prescribers writing short forms or illegible names such as amp that can cause problems and confusion on whether the prescription is for amphotericin or ampicillin. As such Indian prescriptions do not carry the diagnosis of patient on the first line as they are supposed to so the confusion gets compounded. Errors in medicine use are attributed to the same brand name which comes about due to absence of co-ordination between central-state regulatory authorities. There is no central database and monitoring by CDSCO. This has resulted in identical brands being licensed in different states for different drugs pointed out the experts. King Edward Memorial Hospital (KEM) Hospital and Seth Gordhandas Sunderdas Medical College has published a list of Sound-alike drug names in the Indian market. The experts elaborate “For instance Lona brand name is given to a low sodium salt formulation in one State and same Lona name is granted for clonazepam in another State. Same brand names like AZ are granted to three different formulations: AZ which could be azithromycin AZ for albendazole and AZ that is alprazolam. Similarly same brand name Medzole is licensed for four drugs: Metronidazole itraconazole albendazole and clotrimazole.” There is also no record with the government how many drug products are in the market with same brand names or similar sounding names and brands with changed compositions. Therefore the regulatory authority needs to put in place a documentation system of registered drug brands which could substantially reduce chances of misbranding and wrong dispensing. This could ultimately help India to build a national registry of drug brand names. The Union health ministry needs to take the suggestion of WHO quite seriously an act upon without delay the experts added. Another challenge is that the look-alike medications of glimepiride amlodipine ondansetron atorvastatin and benzhexol. In addition errors during dispensing of sound alike medicines: Mellaril Paxil Prilosec OxyContin are also reported. Another issue is that the medication errors are occurring due to counterfeit medicines. This could also result in adverse drug reactions (ADR) which cause injuries or fatalities in 1 of 5 hospital patients. Even in the US medication-related adverse events occur frequently. The cost of ADR to society is more than $136 billion annually which is greater than the total cost of cardiovascular or diabetic care said report.

Stay updated with all the Latest Nagpur headlines here. For more exclusive & live news updates from all around India, stay connected with NYOOOZ.