The Government of India has taken an important step to ban 156 fixed dose combinations (FDC)drugs, igniting the attention of all the pharmaceutical and wellness sectors. The action is said to be taken by the Union Ministery of Health and Family Welfare, which raised concerns regarding the safety and effectiveness of these drugs. After thoroughly reviewing the reports, the decision was taken by the Drug Technical Advisory Board (DTAB) along with an expert committee. They concluded that these medicines’ combination was posing health risk to humans and they also lacked therapeutic justification.
FDCs are the drugs which are the combination of multiple active pharmaceutical ingredients in a specified proportion. These drugs are used to increase the effect of treatment as they target 2 or more than 2 symptoms at the same time. The review which was performed came out to be revealing that these combinations were causing very little effect to benefit the patients but were causing more damage than cure. Among the banned combinations are commonly used drugs like Mefenamic Acid and Paracetamol (for pain relief), Omeprazole Magnesium and Dicyclomine HCl (for abdominal pain), and various cold and allergy medications combining Paracetamol with Cetirizine and Phenylephrine.