Drug Counterfeiting in India Exposes Vulnerability of QR Codes to Cloning

India has recently rolled back key measures for pharmaceutical traceability – possibly due to the increasingly widespread copying of genuine QR codes onto counterfeit drugs.

14 years after mandating track and trace on pharma exports, India’s Directorate General of Foreign Trade has now withdrawn this mandate.

The official reason for the withdrawal is to avoid any duplication with the domestic drug traceability regulation of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, which implemented barcode requirements for 300 domestic drug brands in 2023.

Another reason is related to international compliance, in that most export destinations for Indian-made drugs have their own serialisation requirements for traceability, which are different to India’s. Therefore it was considered unnecessary and burdensome for exporters to also have to comply with India’s domestic traceability regulations.

However, an unofficial reason for withdrawing India’s drug export traceability mandate could be the current widespread duplication of traceability codes onto fake drugs, which render the codes ineffective.