The Sports Authority of India's Dope Control Centre at the Jawaharlal Nehru stadium has been awarded the ISO-9001 certification, the first but significant step towards acquiring accreditation from the International Olympic Council.
The centre will now have to obtain the ISO-17025 certification before its ambition of becoming only the sixth IOC-accredited laboratory in the Asia-Pacific region can be realised.
The ISO-9001 certificate was formally handed over to Sports Minister Vikram Verma by Dr A Mathur, CEO of the Standard Testing Quality Certification, the nodal agency of ISO in India, on Tuesday.
"This is an important step towards getting accreditation from the IOC. Last year IOC's medical commission made ISO-17025
also a mandatory requirement for its accreditation and we hope to get it by March next year," SAI director general Shekhar Dutt said.
"As it is, 70 per cent of the requirements under ISO-17025 are already covered by ISO-9001. We now have internationally certified testing and training equipment and procedures and we will maintain those standards," he said.
Verma said an application for IOC accreditation would be made by March next year and the laboratory should get it in the next few months. "We will try our best to get it before the Afro-Asian Games next year," he said.
"It is a big achievement for India and a big step towards making Indian sports completely dope free," he said.
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