Over 3% of all drugs sold across India are of substandard quality, according to the first-ever survey conducted by the union ministry of health and family welfare. In the largest ever scientifically designed drug survey undertaken in the world for determining the quality of drugs, ministry officials said 0.0245% of the 47,012 samples were spurious. The ministry had entrusted the work relating to carrying out a survey of the extent of problems of "spurious and not of standard quality drugs'' to the National Institute of Biologicals (NIB), Noida. The NIB has since submitted the report to the government. The survey included as many as 224 drug molecules belonging to 15 different therapeutic categories of the National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM) 2011. As a part of this survey, 47,954 drug samples relating to 23 dosage forms were drawn from 654 districts of 36 states and union territories from the supply chains including retail outlets, government sources and from eight airports and sea ports.