After 30 years, India began to make Penicillin G

Subject: Science and tech

Section: Health

Context:

The common antibiotic penicillin will be manufactured in the country for the first time in 30 years.

More on news:

Forty greenfield projects under the PLI schemes for manufacturing bulk drugs and medical devices were inaugurated on Saturday.
This included 27 greenfield bulk drug projects and 13 manufacturing plants for medical devices.
The bulk drug parks will produce active pharma ingredients for commonly used drugs.

About Penicillin:

Penicillin is a medication used to manage and treat a wide range of infections.
It is in the beta-lactam antibiotic class of drugs.
This activity describes penicillin’s indications, action, and contraindications as a valuable agent in treating infection.

About Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients:

These are the active ingredients contained in a medicine.
It is that part of the medicine that produces the intended therapeutic effects.
For example, in a painkiller, the active ingredient relieves pain.
In the OTC drug Crocin, the API is paracetamol.
Only a small amount of the API is required to produce the effect and so the medicine contains only the required amount of the API.
China is one of the largest producers of Key Starting Material (KSM) and APIs in the world

About Production Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme:

The scheme expected to give a fillip to the domestic drug manufacturing industry is the PLI Scheme.
This scheme aims to promote the domestic manufacturing of, apart from APIs, drug intermediates and key starting materials (KSMs).
In this scheme, financial incentives will be provided to eligible manufacturers of identified 53 critical bulk drugs on their incremental sales over the base year (2019-20) for a period of 6 years.
The scheme will be implemented through a Project Management Agency (PMA) to be nominated by the Department of Pharmaceuticals.

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