The Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) on Tuesday accused the Punjab government of protecting the “drug mafia” in the Punjab Institute of Cardiology drug deaths case by putting the onus on “innocent doctors”. Elaborating their claims, the PMA office-bearers alleged that along with the discovery of fake delivery challans, the government had already admitted to have used fake SOP’s of drug checking at the PIC.
The original SOP and original Performa have no mention of DTL or batch number. After five months, the government has put the blame of checking the batch number and DTL of those drugs on the three doctors implicated in the case which is unjust, they claimed. The PMA further alleged that the incident took place because of minor negligence on part of the pharmaceutical company.
They said deaths occurred only in those patients who have been using drugs from the free pharmacy of the PIC, which shows that the particular batch of medicines was spurious. The government probe team headed initially by Major (r) Mubashar and another one by DIG Zulfiqar Cheema declared ‘Isotab’ tablet the major cause of the deaths while the doctors were implicated without having been part of the probe, they said.