As a measure to safeguard public health, Gujarat's drug watchdog, Food and Drug Control Administration (FDCA) will shortly launch a SMS and e-mail service to apprise doctors and chemists about the banned drugs.

"We will soon launch a SMS and e-mail service that informs doctors and chemists here about the banned and spurious drugs, which could possibly be in circulation due to lack of awareness," FDCA Commissioner H G Koshia told PTI.

"A mock trial of the service was done recently which was successful," he said.

After having launched an e-governance model for issuing sales and drug manufacturing licenses online in Gujarat, FDCA is now working with the National Informatics Centre (NIC) for launching bulk SMS/e-mail service.

There are about 28,000 chemist shops, and over 700 pharmaceutical manufacturing units registered with the FDCA in Gujarat.

According to Koshia, of the 150 samples of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients, formulations, cosmetics, homoeopathic medicines sent for laboratory trials, nearly 8-12 per cent are not found fit for consumption.

"With the launch of this service, we will be able to circulate information about the drugs or drugs having ingredients which fail during the laboratory trial phase," Koshia said.

As part of this project, the testing laboratories in the state would be linked online with the system here, he said.