On Saturday the chief minister also removed Muhammad Jehanzeb, the provincial health secretary, and the chief executive Dr Azhar, as well as other senior officials at the hospital from their posts for acting negligently in their distribution of free drugs to patients. Shahbaz gave the orders while attending a meeting after the monitoring committee had submitted its report.
The committee, headed by Najam Saeed, suggested in its report that the hospital administration showed negligence in the distribution of medicine, resulting in the deaths. A participant in the meeting told The Express Tribune that the “Punjab government has moved the Lahore High Court officially to request a judicial inquiry into the incident.”
Meanwhile, questions have been raised about the two parallel models - in simple terms, one for the rich and another for the poor - being run at the institute. All those who died from the drugs were patients without much money. There are four categories of patients at PIC: the poor, the entitled, general users and paying patients.
“The patients in the poor category in some cases get a time for primary angioplasty after six to eight months,” a PIC official, who asked not to be named, said. “A heart patient might pass away if put on hold for such a long time. In the entitled category, government employees are treated for free but they are also made to wait a long time in many cases. In the general category, patients pay half the charges and the other half are paid by the hospital. Paying patients are the VIP category. A paying patient is operated on urgently, even if a patient in poor category has waited for surgery for months.”
Dr Joseph (not his real name), a government employee in the health department, said: “This is the only institute in Punjab where doctors remain public doctors till 1pm and then at 3pm they become private consultants. The efficiency with which poor patients are treated can be judged from the facts that none of 109 patients who died was a paying patient.”
The Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) is reportedly mulling over going to court regarding the parallel systems at the PIC.
PMA Joint Secretary Dr Salman Kazmi told The Express Tribune: “The system at PIC is flawed. If you are paid for treating patients after 3pm, you would want everybody to come after that time. If some doctor wants to earn money he should practice privately, not at a public hospital.”
Meanwhile, a storekeeper at the PIC, named Zulfiqar, and pharmacist Yousaf have been arrested in connection with the deaths due to medicines’ reaction. “There is a lot of panic among PIC low staffers. The two arrested people were low-cadre employees and did not have any decisive role in storing or purchasing the medicine,” said a PIC official.
In Rawalpindi, the district health department has so far been unable to trace the whereabouts of 11 out of 55 patients after they obtained Soluprin, the drug feared to be the ‘killer medicine’ from the Punjab Institute of Cardiology. There has also been a reported death in Multan, the first casualty from southern Punjab.
The FIA, meanwhile, has ordered the arrest of a pharmacist and a shopkeeper allegedly involved in giving out adulterated medicines to patients in Lahore.
They are not the only ones feeling the heat, as a petition was filed in the Lahore High Court against Shahbaz Sharif, claiming the absence of a health minister resulted in the deaths. The petition also claimed that it was against the rules of business that the chief minister is in charge of 18 ministries in the province.
(With additional reporting by Mudassir Raja in Rawalpindi, Asad Kharal in Lahore, and Owais Jafri in Multan)
Published in The Express Tribune, January 29th, 2012.
COMMENTS (22)
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The secretary health should be a technical person, not a buerucrat.preferably he should be some postgraduate in community medicine or public health having international fame.similarly the posts of pharmacysts in the hospitals should be increased according to WHO yardsticks in order to avoid such incidents in future.
Shahbaz Sharif was thinking that there is not a single competent person to take the responsibility of Health Ministry so he decided to keep this ministry with him.
Instead of crying he should admit the fault and resign.
@Syme: "The additional charge of Secretary Health has been given to Secretary Agriculture, Captain (R) Arif Nadeem. Seriously??"
Yes seriously! If he can be secretary of agriculture, then why not of health? No skills needed in either case anyway. Don't forget we are in Pakistan. Only skills you need is to yell profanities at your sub ordinates in fluent English and tell them what you would do to their female family members! Ayub, Yahya, Zia and Mush appointed themselves leader of the country and performed various acts with Constitution and did very well for themselves; and so will Captain!
More than 100 people died and punjab is only TRANSFERING the culprits.
It is a good first step. Since the CM himself is incharge of the Ministry concerned, the matter should be handled by the Central Government. This will build confidence in the people that an impartial action will be taken.
What about the people who actually manufactured these fake medicines. They probably had political affiliations so were spared.
The additional charge of Secretary Health has been given to Secretary Agriculture, Captain (R) Arif Nadeem. Seriously??
Havent all of us seen this serial before in the Shahbaz dominion? Something bad happens, CM make s stormy visits, suspends, fires or demotes people on impulse, sets up judicial or other commissions for inquiry' we hear nothing; until the next bad thing happens. CEOs and not middle managers are responsible for taking pre-emptive steps and not just reacting to things after the event. That's my humble view and experience in the so called developed world.
Good governance is much more than image management.
Our dear khadim-e-aala cannot find one capable man in entire punjab to run health ministry and wants to do everything by himself.The result is for all to see,Why dont you resign yourself if you have any decency left in you.Please stop firing doctors which seems to be your favourite pastime
Once again Shahbaz Sharif is shifting the blame. Once again a judicial inquiry, when a criminal inquiry is needed, just to make the issue subside, with no FIR registered. Finally, when the judicial commission's report is released, he will sweep the findings under the carpet, just like he did with Khawaja Sharif murder conspiracy, Flood report.
We've seen this drama many times before Mr. CM. If u had any integrity you would have resigned, without that this is just smoke and mirrors.
if CM had been doing his job this would not have happened this is only words nothing will be done
I am sure that the CM will get things sorted out soon enough. He takes a personal interest in many of affairs of the province. Hopefully the nation will learn from this tragedy and prevent such a recurrence with new safety measures in place.
u were the In-charge of ministry u are responsible, don't u wanna accept that??
I hope that the officials were demoted on strong bases rather than media pressure. It's indeed a most unfortunate incident, however those not involved should not suffer for the deeds of pharmaceutical companies/watchdogs, and should wait for the autopsy reports/drug test sample reports so as to establish the actual casue of misery, generally perceived to be be caused by the presence of a certain metallic particle(in excess) in the base of the medicine that could not be detected by tests within pakistan.
I don't get why he is removing the MS, the doctors in PIC were using medications that were registered by his government.
Don't worry Mr. CM Judiciary will save you.
Shehbaz Sharif needs to resign to ensure an independent enquiry can take place.
Wrong heads rolled; as usual!