1.6 million vaccine vials verified by a Lahore-based laboratory were retested by a lab in Islamabad which termed them substandard, says ACE official. DESIGN: AMNA IQBAL
The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE) has sought help from district police officers to check whether any deaths have been caused by using substandard interferon injections in the treatment of hepatitis C (HCV).
The ACE instructed all DPOs in the province to collect information from various hospitals in their respective districts and submit a report by March 30.
“We have named three high-ranking officials from the health department involved in this scam and their names were sent to the chief secretary,” said an ACE official wishing to remain anonymous. He added a response from the chief secretary would be received in three days after which they would begin arresting the culprits.
He said 1.6 million vaccine vials, which were worth Rs240 million and verified by a Lahore-based laboratory were retested by a lab in Islamabad which termed them substandard.
“DPOs were told that HCV patients were getting free injections from government hospitals every month,” said the official, adding the hospitals should be approached to gain information about the patients.
The official denied repeated requests to provide the names of the three main officials involved in the scam. He maintained the matter was extremely sensitive and mentioning their names would be premature. Efforts are underway to arrest the men, he assured.
On March 6, the Peshawar High Court bench headed by Chief Justice Dost Muhammad Khan ordered ACE Director Fayyaz Ali Shah to lodge criminal cases against those involved in the fraud. The court issued directives to obtain information relating to the situation after Shah told the bench a lab report claiming the medicine was genuine turned out to be forged.
In another hearing on March 13, the court was told that a probe was launched in Abbottabad and a total of 60 deaths were investigated out of which six are suspected to be caused by the substandard injections.
The provincial government is providing free hepatitis treatment across the province and a total of 21, 955 patients with HCV were treated last year. Nearly 195,620 screening tests were conducted for the virus, while 163,300 were done for Hepatitis B. 24,000 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests were also conducted.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 16th, 2013.
COMMENTS
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ