ICT admin seal nine pharmacies for selling expired, spurious drugs

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ISLAMABAD: Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) Administration has prepared a comprehensive plan for the first month of 2019 to get rid of a mafia indulge in selling spurious and substandard medicines across the city.

The district administration under directives of Minister for Health Aamir Mahmood Kayani had launched a special campaign against the illegal medical practices and on first day of this drive raided nine pharmacy/medical stores including Amin Pharmacy, Danyal Medical Store, Bismillah Medical Store, Gomal Medical Store, Sardar Pharmacy, Naeem Medical, Shahban Pharmacy, Barakahu Medical Store and Umer Medical Store were sealed.

Senior Drug Inspector Islamabad Sardar Shabbir Ahmed along with his team conducted the raids against drug sale outlets operating in different areas of the federal capital.

The stores were sealed for carrying out illegal medical practice, like selling expired drugs, in the absence of a pharmacist, some were operating with an expired license, while some found involved in the sale of tranquillisers and without prescriptions.

Controlled drugs were also recovered from them and some found failed to maintain a proper record.

Cases under Drugs Act 1976 have also been registered against five distributors for making illegal supplies of drugs to these outlets.

Meanwhile, citizens of twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad have raised grave concerns over such violators and called for strict action against the sale of sub-standard and spurious drugs.

According to them, where many medical stores avoid following contemporary laws, they were also playing with the lives of others by deputing sales managers to those who do not have even basic knowledge about medicines.

They asked to designate only authorised pharmacists at medical stores to protect the customers from dealing with complications due to use of any wrong medicine from hands of illiterate sales managers.

Saqib Kamran, a citizen said that the health department of Islamabad has an important role to play in this regard to ensure fulfilment of all laws by the medical stores and pharmaceutical companies.

Aslam Awan, another citizen said that pharmaceutical companies should consider the seriousness of the matter and deliver stock to only those medical stores where all concerned laws are followed.

He suggested conducting regular surprise visit by the teams of the health department to the medical stores to check any sale of sub-standard or spurious drugs besides following other laws.

Senior drug inspector Shabir Ahmed said that the authority would continue its campaign against the spurious and unregistered drugs by its National Task Force with its full strength till the complete eradication of this heinous crime.

He said that with the support of health ministry, “We were determined to grab the culprits with iron hands and in this regard, various activities have been done by our teams”.

Shabbir said that this facility would ensure quality drugs from licensed manufacturers or importers, in the market and would also help to address the problems of drug shortages and availability.

He opined that online access to this database would strengthen the regulatory system and monitoring in order to eradicate unregistered, substandard, spurious, falsified and counterfeit drug products from the country.