NDTL gets WADA accreditation back, to help NADA test more samples

Express News Service

The National Dope Testing Laboratory (NDTL) has finally got its accreditation back. Sports minister Anurag Thakur revealed this on Thursday through a tweet: “National Dope Testing Laboratory (NDTL) regains the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) accreditation.” It’s more than two years and four months since NDTL lost its accreditation in August, 2019. WADA also confirmed the development late on Thursday.

It is significant because the accreditation has been restored during a busy year with two multi-discipline mega events — Commonwealth Games and Asian Games — slated for 2022. This will give an opportunity for India to test more athletes next year. This will give National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) the opportunity to collect more samples and reduce cost of testing as well. India’s NDTL is among the cheaper WADA-accredited labs and a lot of countries used to test samples in India.

Sports ministry has been desperate to get back the accreditation and the lab was under review since January last year. Lack of experts to handle Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry (IRMS) machine was one major hurdle besides other ‘non-conformities’. India even contributed $1 million to WADA for research and development. India was sending samples abroad for testing.

According to a WADA, “Based on the pandemic conditions, WADA’s Laboratory Expert Advisory Group (Lab EAG) concluded that a remote assessment was the only option available, and scheduling of the remote assessment was delayed until the Laboratory could fully participate in September 2021 (due to the pandemic’s impact on the Laboratory).” The Lab EAG finally concluded that the NDTL had met the conditions imposed based on remote assessment.

Bad AAF record

According to the 2020 WADA Testing Figures Report, India once again finds itself among the top two nations on Adverse Analytical Findings (AAF). Despite limited collection in 2020 — there’s a 46 per cent overall decrease in sample collection — India’s 55 AAFs is behind only the United States’ 136. 

Compared to the number of sampled collected by the two National Anti-Doping Organisations, NADA collected just 1186 samples (including blood), while the US 7756. Percentage-wise, India stands at 4.6 per cent while the US just 1.8 per cent.

According to the report, sample collection was hit during 2020 because of Covid. In India, there were less competitions and collection of samples started somewhere in October. In competition collections stood at 708 and out of competition was 423. 

The number of samples collected in the previous years was 4026 (2019 Testing Report), way more than what NADA collected during the Covid-affected year. In competition urine sample numbers stood at 2248 while out of competition at 1778. The 2021 data, which is expected to be more than 2020, will be available next year.

Focus on Olympic sports

In the 2019 Anti-Doping Rule Violations Report, India is among the top three countries behind Russia and Italy with 152 cases. The AAFs in 2019 was as high as 225. India’s 4.6 per cent positive cases is much higher than overall 0.67 total per cent of AAFs (1,009 AAFs from 149,758 samples).

With a very hectic calendar next year for Olympic sports, NADA should focus collecting samples from athletes in Olympic disciplines rather than sports like bodybuilding and powerlifting. According to 2019 ADRV data, 57 cases were in bodybuilding. 

Instead focus should be on sport like athletics, weightlifting and wrestling. With the accreditation back and low cost of testing, India now should aim to reach the 4000 urine samples mark next year.