The committee formed by Punjab government to ascertain how the life-saving drugs provided free of cost by the Punjab Institute of Cardiology turned into merciless killers overnight may add another file to the piles of such reports, but the dead would not know this. I am a salaried person and could have been very much dead, thankful to the government, for even the most common pain killer medicines provided at hospitals if I had a bit of trust in our functionaries.
It was perhaps a year ago that I visited Holy Family Hospital of the Rawalpindi to have a friend of mine checked up by the sort of doctors sitting over there, and they very generously handed over a strip of painkillers. I doubted the drug and asked the guy at the medical store, where from we had to collect other costly medicine that came out on the prescription paper from the honest and able skull of the doctor, as to will he sell out the medicine granted in aid to us by the hospital on his counter, and the answer was a big NO. The guy added that they even didn’t know the pharmaceutical companies branded on the medicines provided by government hospitals. The honourable doctors, if I am right, sitting in the committee, will certainly have more knowledge than you and me about all this drama, but they will rather try hard to conceal the truth to save the Draculas’ face.
The other day, a friend of working as Research and Development In-Charge in a reputed pharmaceutical company of Peshawar visited me in Islamabad and shared more alarming facts. Actually, these companies care more for their names than the lives of Pakistani commoners, who have no one to speak of or hold someone accountable for the crimes committed against them. I could doubt the figures my friend shared that in a recent consignment worth Rupees 100 million, a hefty share of Rupees 60 million went to the functionaries of the government hospitals of Peshawar, but I couldn’t doubt his claim that the raw material for the said consignment was purchased from the local market while material for the same medicines sold out in local markets with brand names is imported from the West.
I have requested my friend to provide me with the documents of the scams in the pharmaceutical company he works for, and he has promised to do so, so that veil could be shown to the public.
In talk shows for the Khyber News and the articles I ever wrote, I always focused on requesting the people to develop their own sense about things because the government has no time to take pain for them. Never should they take any drug provided by the government hospitals or private outlets until and unless a qualified person always available locally testifies that the medicines were not fake and spurious.
And our trust in the government can restore if it thoroughly examines the whole process of the art, sorry to say an art for it is no more a science for them, of medicine making in Pakistan and check each and every plant by reputable inspectors, may be imported from abroad, and punish the wrong doers as per the books. And the committee, as they will not be able to find any person behind all this cruelty, should voluntarily stop working to save precious money of this poor nation.
KHALID AZIZ
Islamabad
