The Institute of Medicine and the Department of Drug Administration (DDA) have agreed to establish bioequivalence centre at Maharajgunj Medical Campus to test the quality of generic medicines.

IOM Dean Dr Jagdish Prasad Agrawal and DDA Director General Narayan Prasad Dhakal on Thursday signed a memorandum of understanding to run the facility at the Pharmacology Department of the campus.

“An agreement has been reached with the Department of Drug Administration to set up the required infrastructures for the facility and train the staff,” Dr Agrawal told the Post.

The DDA has allocated Rs 50million to set up the centre and train its human resource.

The IOM has formed a committee under Campus Chief Dr Pratap Narayan Prasad to oversee and manage the facility.

The centre will enusre the quality of generic medicines by testing them on healthy human volunteers.

“The drugs will be tested on human volunteers to see how well the drugs work and if there are any side effects that doctors need to be aware about before prescribing them to patients,” said Dhakal.

 “Only those drugs that have been tested and approved by the centre will be accepted by the DDA.”

As medicines with generic names are far cheaper than the ones sold by private

pharmaceuticals, the medicines approved by the DDA would be affordable to all.