Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has formed a probe committee to enquire into the deaths of 16 people in Shahdara who succumbed to a deadly cough syrup on Saturday night.
Shahzad, Waqas, Sikandar, Ramzan, Shahbaz, Parvez and several others took the cough syrup Tyno for intoxication. This resulted in sickness and as time went on, their condition deteriorated. They were rushed to Mayo Hospital, and four of them, including 35-year old Sikandar, 15-year old Ramzan, 18-year old Shahbaz and 22-year old Parvez expired before reaching the hospital. Later, 20-year-old Shehzad, 23-year-old Waqas, 45-year-old Jawed and others expired gradually during treatment at the hospital Shahdara Police registered a case under Section 302 against owners of the medical stores which sold the poisonous cough syrup. Punjab Health Department has also taken notice of the incident and the EDO demanded a detailed report over the deaths in the next 24 hours. The deaths of 16 people has blown the lid on the neglect on the part of district health authorities, as the Punjab high-ups are trying try to ascertain the exact cause of their demise.
The rules clearly defined the responsibility of district health authorities to maintain a check on the sale of drugs at medical stores through a team of 10 drug inspectors, one for each town in Lahore. “Every medical store is bound to check a doctor’s prescription before selling a medicine in narcotics/steroid category besides maintaining a register to whom it is being sold and drug inspectors are supposed to check any such irregularity,” a senior official in the City District Government Lahore (CDGL) said. As per an estimate, around 5,000 medical stores are registered in the metropolitan, while the official concerned maintained that an exact figure can only be given after the system goes computerized. “Tyno cough syrup comes in the narcotics category and the medical stores concerned did not complete the requisite in this episode. This is one syrup, there are hundreds of other drugs in the same category being sold unchecked,” an official seeking anonymity told Pakistan Today. The chief minister’s inspection team along with district health officials visited the site after the CM constituted a committee to look into it. Lahore Deputy Drug Controller Shaukat Wahab, who also accompanied the CMIT, told Pakistan Today that the entire episode is being viewed from different angles. “It is but possible that the deceased mixed the cough syrup with another intoxicant which caused their death. We have taken the entire stock of Tyno syrup into custody, but it is yet to been seen if it was spurious,” he said. To a question, he said the said syrup is not in Category G which needs a doctor’s prescription for sale.
Mayo Hospital Head of Forensics Dr Saeed Malik said police only handed over two bodies for medico-legal only after receiving orders from the chief minister, while other bodies were given to the deceased’s relatives, who refused to conduct a post-mortem. “The chemical samples have been sent to the newly established forensic science laboratory and will take around 20 days and only then the doctors can figure out the actual cause of death,” he added.