Kathmandu, Jan. 9 -- Of the more than 24,000 types of medicines-both allopathic and ayurvedic-available in the Nepali market and manufactured by national and foreign companies, quality testing was carried out on only 648 in 2025.

Inspectors from the Department of Drug Administration collected samples of over 1,200 medicines, but the National Medicine Laboratory under the department could test only a fraction due to resource constraints.

Experts are concerned that lab reports on most of the medicines collected for testing were submitted almost a year after production, by which time many may have already been sold or used, including substandard ones.

A few days ago, the department, which is also the national regulator of medicines, recal...