LAHORE:
Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial of the Lahore High Court on Thursday directed the federal and Punjab governments to submit details about the licences issued to over 50,000 companies to manufacture medicines.
The judge was hearing a petition demanding the governments take steps to avert tragedies like the deaths of dozens of heart patients due to spurious medicines handed out at the Punjab Institute of Cardiology.
During the course of the hearing, Chief Justice Bandial expressed concern over the large numbers of licences issued to “street-level medicine companies” and pointed out that only 2,000 such licences had been issued in India. He said the court wanted to know what criteria were used to assess whether a licence should be issued, and what mechanism was in place to check the medicines.
Petitioner’s counsel Azhar Siddique said that the subject had been devolved from the federal to the provincial level but no drug regulatory authority had been set up yet in the Punjab. He said that drugs were being supplied unchecked.
He sought a transparent policy for the purchase of medicines for public hospitals and for penalties for those responsible for deaths caused by spurious medicines.
Additional Advocate General Hanif Khatana told the court that the report of an inquiry conducted by an LHC judge on the issue of spurious medicines had not been released yet. He asked the court to adjourn the case till the inquiry is released.
On behalf of the federal government, Deputy Attorney General Azir Latif informed the court that the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) had completed its inquiry into the spurious medicines scam.
The chief justice adjourned the hearing till September 25 .
Published in The Express Tribune, July 13th, 2012.
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