The IAP committee on protection of the child as a consumer plans to take steps to reduce the use of irrational combinations in children?s drugs. Combinations of two or more medicines in a single drug have been a major concern among doctors. Experts estimate that India?s pharmaceutical market is brimming with dozens of irrational combinations of drugs, some of them prescribed to children.

Irrational paediatric combinations can result in children receiving drugs they do not really need. Health activists and drug experts have long been urging the drug controller authorities to ban such irrational combinations to little avail. Now, committee chairman Subhash Arya plans to ask IAP speciality disciplines to compile a list of rational combinations of drugs and circulate them to its 15,000 members nationwide. ?We expect it to be a short list. There won?t be too many rational combinations,? says Arya.