The Union Health Ministry launched SHRESTH – State Health Regulatory Excellence Index on 12th August 2025.
Union Health Secretary, Smt Punya Salila Srivastava virtually launched the SHRESTH in the presence of Dr Rajeev Singh Raghuvanshi, Drug Controller General of India.
Union Health Secretary highlighted the crucial role played by States/UTs in ensuring quality manufacturing and distribution in India and the need for recognizing and supporting their best practices and growth. “States have strong regulatory certification. SHRESTH is a virtual gap assessment tool for states to assess their current position and help towards maturity certification”.
About SHRESTH:
» SHRESTH – State Health Regulatory Excellence Index is a first-of-its-kind national initiative to benchmark and strengthen state drug regulatory systems through a transparent, data-driven framework.
Objective:
The initiative aims to drive improvements in the performance of state drug regulatory authorities across India, ensuring drug safety and quality standards are consistently met.
Key Points:
- The SHRESTH Index will enable targeted improvements in human resources, infrastructure, and digitization across states, ensuring drug safety is guaranteed for every Indian, regardless of geography. It will also promote cross-learning of best practices and foster collaborative spirit.
- The Index, developed after detailed deliberations with the states, will regularly assess the states on several parameters such as human resources, strength of lab testing capacities, extent of digitisation of various approvals and licenses, rigour of inspection and surveillance activities, and responsiveness towards grievances received from citizens.
- This initiative is proposed by the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO).
- CDSCO will facilitate sharing of success stories from top-performing states to drive collaboration and transfer of learnings.