The Punjab Institute of Cardiology is one of the premier cardiac care hospitals of Pakistan, which has served hundreds of thousands of poor citizens, not only from Punjab, but also other provinces including KP, Balochistan and even parts of North Sindh, apart from Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan.
To condemn this hospital is negative politics and unfair. If spurious and contaminated medicines are being manufactured in Pakistan, the responsibility lies solely with the state, which includes both the federal government and provincial governments.
Basic imported raw material required for drugs, if substandard or expired is the responsibility of Customs and FDA which should check these before allowing them in. Unfortunately, the cancer of corruption and its unchecked political and bureaucratic patronisation is the major cause for thousands who have died of various treatable and preventive ailments.
The problem with Pakistan’s health care is the lack of resources and priority that the federal government has over the years provided for this basic need. Apart from this, placing the health ministry and its regulatory and administrative executive under control of civil bureaucrats has contributed to its decadence.
Even when Federal Drug Regularity Authority was under federal government, as it is today, there were major scams involving massive corruption and irregularities in awarding licences to pharmaceutical groups without credible scientific scrutiny at the discretion of either the Minister for Health, or bureaucratic and political intervention.
Federal Drug Regulatory Authority and their inspectors must strictly be run and managed by senior qualified pharmacists from internationally recognised institutes and CEO must have constitutional protection with strict auditing and laboratory testing capability within Pakistan for checks and balances.
Unfortunately, in a country where neither the political or bureaucratic elite, nor even the powerful media barons have ever placed any confidence in getting treatment within Pakistan, this area has been criminally neglected resulting in epidemics like Hepatitis, TB, Congo Fever, Dengue and minor age related problems such cardiac vascular deceases consuming deaths of thousands, while the executive remains unmoved.
ALI MALIK TARIQ
Lahore
Now that pharmaceutical company responsible for this criminal act of supplying killer drugs to PIC has been identified, those responsible should be given exemplary punishment and made to pay for compensation of all those who have died and treatment for affected victims. All those MPAs from Punjab Assembly who were calling for the step down of CM must now call for resignation of Sind Health Minister and others.
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