Lahore High Court accepts petition against medicines reaction case

Lahore High Court accepts petition against medicines reaction case

Accepting a petition against deaths of 100 patients by reaction of spurious medicines at the Punjab Institute of Cardiology (PIC), the Lahore High Court (LHC) has summoned Federal and Punjab Health Secretaries on January 30, 2012.

Justice Umar Atta Bandial started the hearing of a petition filed against the severe negligence of its nature by health departments.

Muhammad Azhar Siddique filed the petition on Monday, claiming that over 100 patients had died and dozens of others were in critical condition after using medicines provided by the PIC. In his view, the case was of absolute negligence of the PIC administration.

He added that the provincial government has failed to identify real culprits. No action has been taken against pharmaceutical companies liable for the manufacturing of theses medicines, he observed.

The medicines sparked off an unknown disease that is said to get stuck in the bone marrow and eventually ends the body’s struggle. The generation of white blood cells stops in the body and a severe chest infection also comes about in such a situation.

The story perhaps unavoidably has moved into the realm of the corrupt and sinister, as the death toll of those who took free medicine from the PIC has exceeded the century.

In what appeared to be a severe negligence, the licence of one of the three pharmaceutics laboratories that supplied the apparently toxic drugs to the PIC expired in April 2011. However, the company continued to manufacture the medicines in mass and even supplied them in the governmental hospitals in addition to open market.

The provincial government withdrew a batch of 200,000 aspirin tablets from the institute after they were found to be lethal.

Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, who also holds the portfolio of health ministry, stated that investigations into the reaction of medicines were in progress and whosoever was found guilty would be dealt with iron hands.

The CM contended that registration of drugs, their pricing and licensing mechanism were being handled by the federal government even after the enactment of the 18^th Constitutional Amendment.

He believes that each and every human life was dear to him and every humanly possible step was being taken to cope with the crisis.

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Posted by Faisal Farooq on Jan 26 2012. Filed under National, Pakistan, Society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.