AIDCOC sets up training centre in Hyderabad

Aiming to sharpen the skills of regulatory officers across the country, the All India Drugs Control Officers’ Confederation (AIDCOC) has set up the AIDCOC training centre in Hyderabad. Besides regulators, the centre will also be open to all stakeholders of the pharma industry as well as academia.

It is a national level academy created to share experiences of senior regulators, veteran leaders and industry experts to drug inspectors and other regulatory officials, as well as industry and academia on recent trends in drug regulations and best global practices.

Considering the pandemic situation due to the coronavirus, the organisation will commerce operations virtually. And to begin with, it will organise a webinar in the coming week dedicated for both the regulators from states and Centre.

Lakshmi Prasanna, coordinator, AIDCOC Training Academy and Central Council member, AIDCOC said, “We will kickstart the training programmes on virtual platform with a special focus on changing regulations in COVID–19 pandemic, Good Management skills including Stress Management and Work Life Balance in uncertain times and Technological Innovations in Healthcare etc. The AIDCOC training academy is a long cherished dream of AIDCOC and it came true during our Silver Jubilee.”

SW Deshpande, Chief Advisor, AIDCOC said, “Since our inception i.e., 1995, our priority was achieving professional excellence through self initiatives, and in line with this agenda, we carried out training programmes and found that the requirements are in the areas of technical, legal, investigation and management. Accordingly, we had designed the training programme modules, and then we conducted several programmes from 1995 onwards. Our training programmes of good management practices and improving investigational skills were recognised by states like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu. And this investigational skill programme was in collaboration with the CDSCO, with whom we conducted a couple of programmes in Mumbai. Besides this, we also trained newly appointed drug inspectors from states like Bihar, Karnataka and North East- West Bengal.”

He further added,”The exclusive training programme for Karnataka officers was conducted with the funding from the State Government. And this was our long-term objective to set up an all India training programme not only for the regulators, but also for the industry stakeholders as well as academia professionals. Although we will have modules for all, including regulators, industry and academia, to begin with we will start with the regulators. We are also teaming up with UL for technical assistance, as in the past the Gujarat FDCA had partnered with them and their technical expertise benefited the department.”

Prasanna further added that presently there are significant gaps between the industry and academia and our objective is to fill this gap, therefore the training programme will design programmes exclusively for them, which will meet the requirements.

Commenting on the fee structure, she informed that the association has set up the training centre from its own funds and has not taken financial assistance. Although, it has not yet finalised the fee format/structure, it is assumed that there won’t be any fee for the regulators, but considering the objective of the training centre, which is to impart the knowledge, it is likely that the fee for industry stakeholders and academia will be minimal.

Dr VG Somani, DCGI virtually inaugurated the centre on October 4, 2020. Reportedly, the association has finalised the location earlier this year and executed all required work related to the centre, but due to the COVID–19 pandemic, decided to postpone its commencement.

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