The Union Public Service Commission will likely be conducting interviews for the appointment of the Drug Controller General of India subsequent week. The high contenders referred by the well being ministry to the fee embrace three officers – Dr VG Somani, Dr Rajeev Singh Raghuvanshi and Dr Jai Prakash. Casually generally known as ‘personal talk with the probables’, the interview performed by UPSC is slated to happen on January 27.
The DCGI is the pinnacle of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO), which is the apex drug regulatory physique that regulates medicines, vaccines and medical gadgets. It is a particularly essential place for regulating manufacturing, import and gross sales of medical merchandise in India in addition to high quality of exports from India to different nations. It additionally takes care of medical trials and new approval of medicine other than a number of different essential roles.
In February, the ministry of well being and household welfare marketed for the place of well being regulator and obtained round 20 functions. “Three candidates have been chosen out of these 20, as per the recruitment guidelines of UPSC, and the names have been referred to the fee for the interview,” a authorities official informed News18.
Once selected, the UPSC will recommend the name of a candidate to the appointments committee of the cabinet (ACC), whose decision will be final but it may or may not agree with the UPSC recommendation.
Meet the contestants
Dr VG Somani
Dr Somani is the current DCGI and was appointed for a term of three years on August 14, 2019. So far, he has already got two extensions — one in August and another in November 2021. His tenure is slated to expire on February 15, 2022.
A postgraduate in pharmacy and doctorate in pharmaceutical sciences from Nagpur University, Dr Somani worked as a joint drugs controller in CDSCO heading the divisions of regulation of medical devices and in vitro diagnostics, stem cells and blood products apart from other departments.
He has worked in several positions such as deputy drugs controller, assistant drugs controller and drugs inspector at CDSCO at zonal offices. His work has been appreciated by the central government as well as by the pharmaceutical industry, especially during the Covid-19 outbreak, as his office worked and gave accelerated approvals to multiple vaccines and other experimental therapies against the virus.
Recently, however, the quality of Indian medicines came into question with allegations of contaminated products exported to Gambia and Uzbekistan, increasing the spotlight on loopholes in the Indian drug regulation system.
Dr Rajeev Singh Raghuvanshi
Raghuvanshi is the secretary-cum-scientific director of the Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission, which is an autonomous institution under the health ministry that sets standards for all drugs manufactured, sold and consumed in India.
He completed his schooling in Varanasi and graduation as well as postgraduate studies in pharmacy from Banaras Hindu University. He did his PhD from National Institute of Immunology in New Delhi.
According to his LinkedIn profile, he worked for seven years at National Institute of Immunology and then moved to join the poster boy of the pharmaceutical industry, Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. “I was part of multiple complex generic development projects for the US, EU, RoW (rest of the world) and India markets. Gained in-depth knowledge of generic development, scale-up and technology transfer, validation batches, commercial launches etc,” as per his profile, including, “developed a quantity of NDDS (novel drug supply system), generic in addition to non-generic, formulations.”
After spending 12 years at Ranbaxy, he moved to another Indian drugmaker, Dr Reddy’s Laboratories in Hyderabad. He stayed with the company for the next 11 years and resigned as senior vice-president and head of differentiated formulations (research and development) at the innovation division to join the IPC.
During his tenure, Dr Raghuvanshi dealt with multiple drug regulators including the US FDA — one of the strictest regulators in the world — which provided an in-depth understanding of the working of global regulatory agencies.
“In the role, I was also responsible for managing India and Emerging Market Regulatory teams which has given me in-depth knowledge of regulatory systems of these countries,” his profile learn.
Dr Jai Prakash
He was the previous secretary-cum-scientific director at IPC earlier than Dr Raghuvanshi took over. Dr Prakash has been an energetic voice in pharmacovigilance programmes throughout India.
Previously, Dr Prakash additionally acted as senior principal scientific officer at IPC and took extra roles similar to CPIO (central public data officer) for technical issues of the fee below the RTI Act and first appellate authority (FAA). His analysis work has been printed on varied platforms round pharmacology.
Some of his newest work revolves round toxicity testing of vaccines and biologicals and pharmacopoeial high quality requirements. During his tenure at IPC, he’s credited for beginning the challenge to enhance the reporting of antagonistic reactions to medicine throughout India by launching a cellular software.
News18 contacted the official spokesperson of the ministry of well being and household welfare for the affirmation of interview and names of candidates chosen. There was no response until the time of publishing the article.
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