The Punjab government has constituted a committee comprising senior cardiologists to look into the issue of unregistered stents and other products, which are used in the procedure of cardiac patients.
The committee comprising Prof Dr Gen Azhar Kiyani (retd), Prof Nadeem Hayat Malik, Prof Saqib Shafi and Prof Anjam Jalal would present their recommendations to register the pharmaceutical companies/firms with the Drug Regularity Authority of Pakistan (DRAP).
A team of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) following a raid at Mayo Hospital on Friday unearthed a gang involved in selling fake stents to heart patients and extracting money from them. These fraudsters used to sell these fake stents for up to Rs 200,000, which actually cost them Rs 6,000. Stents worth Rs 40 million were seized by the FIA team. The sources claim that employees of the hospital are also involved in the scam.
Secretary Specialized Healthcare & Medical Education Punjab, Najam Ahmed Shah also chaired a meeting of all the heads of public sector institutes of cardiology here on Saturday. Chairman DRAP also participated in the meeting through video link from Islamabad.
The committee would submit a list of unregistered stents and other products along with the names of manufacturer companies. It was decided that all such companies would apply for registration to the DRAP and the Authority would register quality products according to the list recommended by the experts' committee within a month.
Moreover, a spokesman of the Punjab health department said the department has purchased medicine for hepatitis-C patients at the rate of Rs 54.35 with four conditions, serialization of each pack, separate packing of 1 month medicine course for the patient, courier services and so much so lab testing of the medicine from international drug testing laboratory.
The spokesman said that all the expenditure incurred upon the pharmaceutical company and the department will not bear these expenditures.
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