New Delhi, July 22: In a rare show of honour, a native of Jammu and Kashmir, Dr. Surinder Singh, Drugs Controller General of India, has been named among the world’s 40 most influential people by a UK Pharma Magazine.
 Dr Singh has got this honour in the Pharma sector for the third consecutive year and his name has been put at serial number 29 in the list.
 The list is headed by US President Barack Obama, Bill and Melinda Gates of Gates Foundation, Margret Hamburg, Commission of US Food and Drug Administration, Kathleen Seblieus, US Secretary of Health and Human Resources, Dr Margret Chan, DG, World Health Organization and Bill Clinton, founder William J Clinton Foundation.
 In is citation, the magazine has given credit to Dr Singh for aiming to improve the country’s regulatory system and for launching a new pharma-co-vigilance programme to study the adverse effects of drugs. In this regard, he has sought to increase the number of drug inspectors to maintain quality parameters in the countries from which India imports drugs.

Profile
 Dr Singh was born in village Vijaypur in district Reasi. He has done his MBBS from Medical College, Jammu in 1985 and M.D (Microbiology) from Medical College Rohtak, Haryana in 1988.
 Later, he completed his senior residency in Microbiology from AIIMS, New Delhi.
 He joined as Assistant Professor (Microbiology) at Government Sardar Patel Medical College, Bikaner in 1991 and moved on to Central Research Institute, Kasauli in August, 1992 as Assistant Director In-charge of J.E. Vaccine production.  
 He was Head of Central Drugs Laboratory for Vaccines at CRI-Kasauli from 1993 to 1996 and joined National Institute of Biologicals under Ministry of Health & F.W. Govt. of India in 1997 as Scientist Grade-I and was promoted to the post of Dy. Director (Quality Control) in the year 2004.
 He proceeded on deputation in 2006 to Central Drugs Laboratory (CRI-Kasauli) as Additional Director and continue till January, 2008.   During this period he also had additional charge of Director, Regional Drug Testing Laboratory, Chandigarh from May-2007 to January-2008.
 He took over the charge of Drugs Controller General of India in February-2008 and continued to work in the same position till 2nd November, 2011.   Presently, Dr. Surinder Singh is the Director In-charge of National Institute of Biologicals Noida which is the National Control Laboratory for testing of all Biologicals including Vaccines and Bio-pharmaceuticals.
 Dr. Singh has 27 Scientific publications to his credit and has inspected 70 Vaccine and Biologicals manufacturing units in the country.  He was associated with WHO team in year 2007 as an expert for conducting National Regulatory Authority Assessment of Thailand.  
 He is also a member of WHO expert panels for vaccines and member of WHO Global Action Plan for Influenza Vaccines.  He is the chairman of Biologicals committee of Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission.

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