Spurious medicines: Senators ask govt to set up regulatory body

ISLAMABAD:

A parliamentary panel has laid strong emphasis on the immediate formation of a federal drug regulatory authority to control prices and registration of medicines and avoid PIC-like situation.

The Senate Standing Committee on the Cabinet Secretariat and Inter-Provincial Coordination (IPC) at its meeting on Friday discussed the over 130 deaths caused by spurious drugs in the Punjab Institute of Cardiology (PIC) Lahore and elsewhere.

The committee will present a report in the upper house of parliament on the issue within ten days.

On receipt of the report, inspections of the pharmaceutical companies at Lahore and Karachi, whose drugs were used by the victims, were carried out by the federal drug inspectors and samples of finished
drugs and raw materials were also drawn for test or analysis.

After learning that a foreign Laboratory had reported contamination of the anti-malarial drug, Pyrimethamine, in one of the suspected drugs, Isotab, manufactured by the Karachi-based Efroze Pharma, a joint investigation team of FIA and Drug Control Administration seized stocks of finish drugs, raw materials, machinery and documents from the factory on February 1 and sent samples of drugs and raw materials for testing. Production by the firm was also suspended.

It was decided that another meeting of the committee will be called on February 16. The FIA chief, the Punjab Health secretary, the National Institute of Health executive director, and other technical experts will be called at the meeting to help fix responsibility for the tragic incident and streamline the drug quality control.

The meeting was chaired by senators Shahid Hassan Bugti and Dr Safdar Ali Abbasi.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 11^th, 2012.