Fact Testing: Patanjali’s Coronil, not WHO certified or approved

Fact Testing: Patanjali’s Coronil, not WHO certified or approved

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A storage with an image of Baba Ramdev in a Patanjali store in Ahmedabad. Photo: Reuters / Amit Dave.

A suspected news that the World Health Organization (WHO) approved Patanjali’s Coronil as treatment for coronavirus made headlines on 19 February. Below is a report from News Nation which claims that Ayurvedic medicine has received WHO approval.

Anchor Deepak Chaurasia said during an ‘exclusive’ interview with Patanjali founder Ramdev: ‘Baby Ramdev has proven that he does what he says. There was a lot of debate around Coronil when he first talked about it – is the Coronil kit an effective treatment for coronavirus? But it was approved by the WHO today. ”

Ramdev claimed in response that a team from the WHO visited his company and gave Coronil the license which it considers to be salable in more than 150 countries. A few minutes after the interview, Ramdev also criticized Western medicine, claiming that allopaths use ‘medical terrorism’.

News18 anchor Kishor Anjawami also praised Ramdev while claiming that Coronil received the WHO stamp.

Asian News wrote that Coronil is now ‘WHO certified’. “Baba Ramdev claims that the medicine from Patanjali Research Institute has been certified by the WHO,” the issue said.

BJP spokesman Sanju Verma tweeted: “#PatanjaliCoronil gets approval from DCGI & #WHO, and it’s not a big endorsement for Ayurveda and India’s homemade #StartUp ecosystem that flourished under @narendramodi government. “

Patanjali’s Rakesh tweeted that Coronil is recognized by the WHO as the “first evidence-based medicine for corona”.

Fact check

Shortly after the claim became widespread, the managing director of Patanjali Ayurveda Balkrishna tweeted that the Goods Manufacturing Practice (GMP) Certificate of Pharmaceutical Product (CPP) was issued to Coronil by the Drug Control General of India (DCGI), the government of In the.

He also tweeted in another tweet that the CPP license was issued in accordance with the WHO GMP quality approvals.

“Coronil has received the Certificate of Pharmaceutical Products (CPP) from the Ayush Division of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization according to the WHO certification scheme,” Patanjali said in a statement, as reported by PTI. Based on the data given, the Ministry of Ayush recognized Coronil Tablet as medicine for ‘supportive measure in COVID-19’, the report further reads.

What is the WHO certification scheme?

The WTO certification scheme was developed by the World Health Organization “in response to the request of WTO member countries to facilitate international trade in pharmaceutical products between member countries”, according to the WTO.

The scheme works as follows – the applicant / importing company requests a CPP from the certification authority via the executive company. To put it simply, if a country wanted to import the Coronil from Pantanjali, it would request a CPP from the DCGI by Patanjali. The CPP is issued by a certificate issuing authority (DCGI in the case of India) in accordance with the WHO’s GMP quality assurance.

CPPs are issued independently of the WHO. The UN agency explicitly states that the unauthorized use of its emblem is an illegal act.

Patanjali’s Coronil was therefore a CPP issued by the AYUSH division of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization under the Government of India and the allegation that Coronil was approved or recommended by WHO is untrue.

This article was first published by AltNews and has been republished here with permission.

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