‘A two year old baby needs ‘A’ blood, immediately. Call XYZ to donate blood and save her life.’

Most of us are no stranger to such messages and have often responded by mass forwarding it to friends. A new service started by the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) hopes to make such frantic SOS messages, a thing from the past.

The FDA’s new move to go paperless and introduce all licensing, renewal and inspection reports through its newly developed website, has several ‘public friendly’ measures.

To safeguard the interests of patients participating in clinical trials, their informed consent will soon have to be audio-visually recorded. The move will ensure unsuspecting patients are not recruited without adequate information and counselling about the pros and cons of a drug trial.

The Drug Technical Advisory Board (DTAB) that advises the Centre on scientific matters recently gave its nod for incorporating the change and making it a law.

The Union health ministry’s move to set up three more yellow fever vaccination centres in the state, including one in Pune, has run into trouble. The centers are meant for the people travelling to some countries in Africa and South America which require people entering their land to carry a yellow fever vaccination certificate.

The government on Thursday issued the long-pending Drug Price Control Order, paving the way for the implementation of national pharmaceutical pricing policy, which will lead to a reduction in prices of medicines on an average by 20-25%, and in some lifesaving ones, by up to 80%.

Prices of 652 formulations under 27 therapeutic areas like anti-allergic (cetrizine), cardiac (aten), gastro-intestinal medicines (ocid), pain-killers (paracetamol) and anti-diabetic drugs (insulin) are expected to come down. Others in the list include anti-fungal, anti-tuberculosis, anti-leprosy, anti-hypertensives and cancer drugs. In certain cancer drugs, prices may come down by up to 80%.