15000 instances of misleading advertisements of herbal medicine in 3 years: AYUSH Ministry

Have you come across any such advertisement of any herbal medicine that claims to be a wonder drug? Take it with a pinch of salt as there are thousands of misleading advertisements being circulated by several herbal drug manufacturers to dupe people.

These manufacturers make big advertisements about their products which often fail to live up to the claim. Minister of Ayush Sarbananda Sonowal informed the parliament that during the period from August 2018 to June 2021, 14876 instances of misleading advertisements of ASU&H drugs have been reported to respective State/UT authorities.

According to a press release issued by the Ministry of AYUSH, the Minister also said, “Department of Consumer Affairs, Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution, maintains a Grievance Against Misleading Advertisement (GAMA) portal wherein anyone can register their complaints pertaining to misleading advertisements.”

He added, “Officer from Ministry of AYUSH is also assigned as nodal officer for handling the complaints related to AYUSH products and services registered under this portal. For the period from April 2015 to January 2018 about 809 such complaints pertaining to AYUSH (including herbal) products and services were registered on the portal.”

274 complaints were resolved and about 585 such complaints were sent to the concerned state authority by the Ministry of AYUSH for taking action.

“The misleading advertisements received on the GAMA portal of about 268 advertisements in the year 2019-20 and 339 advertisements in the year 2020-21 have been forwarded to the respective State Licensing Authorities for taking appropriate action as per extant rules,” the release said.