list of medicinal plants

dusty roads like this one are typical in india.but this road goes somewhere unexpected. it leads to a manufacturing center for cipla,one of india’s largest generic drugmakers. india supplies over 30% of the generic drugsin the world. and cipla itself produces one third of theaids medications used in africa. plants like cipla's must comply with stringentstandards called current good manufacturing

list of medicinal plants, practices.cipla is eager to show that its advanced pharmaceutical ingredient plant is in line with those standards.but it takes some doing to get a camera inside. everyone who enters must wear a lab coat.they must cover their shoes, and their hair. they must also be mindful of safety.electronics could ignite volatile solvents.

so cipla uses this device, which measureslevels of solvents in the air. if levels are too high, cameras must be turnedoff. everything in the plant flows in a certainway. that goes for the chemicals in the reactionvessels, the water used in manufacturing, and even the employees.they must enter and exit through specific doors.they must record every change they make to big reactors like this one.if someone opens a vessel, or changes a temperature, it gets written down. the plant that turns those compounds intopills has additional regulations.

a quarantine section holds materials thatthe quality control team has yet to approve. inside, cipla keeps active ingredients inblue barrels. they're ready to be made into pills.the coatings and inactive ingredients for finished doses are all stored separately.everything here is carefully tracked, down to the cardboard boxes.if everything checks out, this plant combines the ingredients, packages the pills, and putsthem into boxes. these contain atorlip, a generic for the cholesterol drug lipitor.these pills will be going out the door-- and now, so will the camera.but not before this gadget sucks away those shoe covers.

there will be bumps in india's road to becomingthe world's drugstore. other indian drugmakers have had productsrecalled or banned because of plant problems. india is also under pressure to make its patentsystem more like those in western countries.

but india has found a market for low-costdrugs. and no matter what happens in india, thatmarket's not going away soon. senior correspondent jean-franã§ois tremblayfilmed and reported this story. for c&en in washington, i'm carmen drahl.