"We are in an advanced stage of establishing a national central procurement agency," Azad said during Question Hour.
He said a society for the purpose had already been registered and the government has set up a search committee to select the Chief Executive Officer for the agency.
The Central Procurement Agency (CPA) will be an autonomous procurement agency for buying all medicines, vaccines, contraceptives and medical equipments for all the Centre's disease control programmes.
Currently, the Health Ministry buys drugs, vaccines, contraceptives and medical equipments departmentally and via the procurement agents for its numerous disease control programmes.
"There have been no instances of supply of sub-standard drugs and equipment to the central government hospitals from black listed pharmaceuticals companies," Azad said.
He said there were laws to deal with people peddling in spurious drugs and 173 persons have been arrested in 2009-10 in this regard.
In 2010-11, 72 persons have been arrested on charges of sale of spurious drugs while 141 people have been arrested in 2011-12, he said.
In reply to another question, Azad said the government had taken several steps to create awareness about H1N1 swine flu virus.
He said 45 laboratories have been set up since 2009 which are capable of testing samples for H1N1 virus, Azad said. PTI SKU
