Hepatitis injections: Substandard medicine suppliers must be exposed says PHC

Anti-terrorism department claims high-ranking officials involved in scam.

PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court (PHC) has directed the anti-corruption department to expose all those involved in supplying substandard interferon injections to hospitals.

The court ordered for a record on patients registered for hepatitis treatment and the number of injections supplied. Additionally, it directed police officials to assist the anti-corruption department in arresting culprits.

The orders were issued by a bench comprising Chief Justice (CJ) Dost Muhammad Khan and Justice Irshad Qaisar during a hearing regarding the supply of substandard medicines to prison hospitals in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P).

Anti-Corruption Department Director General Fayyaz Ali Shah informed the bench that the Lahore-based laboratory declaring the injections to be fit for use in hepatitis C virus (HCV) treatments was banned from conducting further tests on the injection.

He said interferon injections worth Rs5 million were currently stored in different hospitals. However, a record of injections that were returned due to a lack of storage space was unavailable. Record of a total of 20,000 injections was unavailable, he added.

Shah also informed the bench the department was ready to apprehend the suspects, which included high-ranking officials, but were waiting for approval from K-P Chief Secretary Ghulam Dastageer to take action.

He said an inquiry into the scam was currently underway and requested the court to give the department five more days to compile a report with the investigation’s findings.

The bench directed the anti-corruption department to take action against those involved regardless of their rank, and added that those playing with the lives of citizens would be tried for criminal charges. The company supplying the injections should also be made party in the case, the bench observed.

On February 6, the PHC took suo motu notice of substandard injections being used to cure HCV. The court directed the anti-corruption department to conduct a probe into the quality of the injections, which are worth billion of rupees.

Nearly Rs12 billion were spent on the purchase of interferon injections.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 7^th, 2013.