Gujarat government's e-governance initiative has generated interest from Kenya's drug regulators. Impressed by the systematic performance of Xtended Licensing and Laboratory Note (XLN), developed and adopted by Food and Drug Control Administration (FDCA), Kenya is likely to introduce a similar model in the African country.

A delegation led by Dr Ahmed Mohamed, director of inspection and surveillance team from the Pharmacy and Poisons Board (PPB) had visited Gujarat FDCA earlier this month. The self-licensing software has enabled the FDCA to regulate the sales and manufacturing aspects related to drugs, food and cosmetics, issuance of licenses, among other things. The software enables online registration of all the pharmacists and chemists, preventing multiple illegal enrollment of pharmacists to ensure public safety.

Dr H G Koshia, commissioner, Gujarat FDCA, said, "Kenya's officials were impressed with the e-governance programme and have conveyed that they plan to come back for training related to the software, once discussions and necessary permissions are through from the Kenyan government."
In order to wipe out counterfeit drugs from the country, PPB recently launched a digital reporting system that enables medicine users to report a product's efficacy and its adverse reaction to the regulator.

Drug regulators from six Indian states including Himachal Pradesh and West Bengal have approached the state drug regulator for ensuring best regulatory practices in their state while six other state governments have already implemented the programme in their states. UK's medical regulatory mechanism— Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, has also expressed interest in learning about the programme while many African countries have also shown interest in the model in the past.