The Consumer Affairs Authority has raided 471 pharmacies across Sri Lanka so far this year, the authority said on Wednesday, with courts imposing fines totalling Rs. 2,269,500 in cases it has filed.

The bulk of the enforcement took place in the first half of the year: 362 pharmacies were raided and investigated between January 1 and June 30. A further 109 were inspected during a special islandwide programme run on August 3 and 4, in which 86 violations were detected.

The Daily Mirror reported that the Rs. 2,269,500 in fines relates to the January–June cases. Goods seized in this week’s sweep are still to be produced before the relevant Magistrate’s Courts.

What the raids found

The offences detected included storing expired medicines and pharmaceutical products for sale, selling medicines without the mandatory consumer information displayed, and failing to comply with prescribed labelling requirements. Violations were also identified involving medical devices, baby products and other consumer goods sold at pharmacies.

Officers seized expired pills, injections, vaccines, syringes, creams, baby products, pregnancy test kits, medical equipment and other consumer items during the operations.

The authority advised consumers to check expiry dates, labels and mandatory product information before buying medicines and health-related products, and asked the public to report violations through its 1977 hotline during office hours.

Both Ada Derana and the Daily Mirror gave lower figures in their headlines — “over 450” and “over 400” respectively — while their reports each put the actual total at 471.

Part of a wider enforcement push

The pharmacy sweep is the latest in a run of Consumer Affairs Authority actions in the health and medicines trade. A Colombo 13 company and its director were fined Rs. 100,000 this week over expired Ayurvedic medicines and unlabelled cosmetics, and the authority has prosecuted medical institutions in Jaffna over overcharging.

The enforcement lands alongside continuing concern over medicine quality. Health authorities reported this week that 39 medicines failed quality tests in 2026, and a doctors’ union has said drug regulation has broken down at the National Medicines Regulatory Authority. Regulators separately found expired dengue test kits in private laboratories, where the supervising council said it lacks the staff to carry out checks.

Missing labelling is more than a paperwork failure: without the mandatory information, a buyer cannot identify who supplied a medicine, which is the trail regulators follow when a product turns out to be unsafe.

Sources: Ada Derana, Daily Mirror.