PAKISTAN Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has held Punjab Chief Minister Mian Shahbaz Sharif in the capacity of health minister responsible for the deaths of 100 cardiac patients after reaction from substandard medicines at the Punjab Institute of Cardiology (PIC), Lahore, and demanded his immediate resignation in conformity with democratic traditions.
Addressing a press conference at a local hall on Thursday, PTI Central Information Secretary Shafqat Mahmood, General Secretary Punjab Dr Yasmin Rashid, Information Secretary Punjab Andleeb Abbas and Women Wing Punjab President Saloni Bukhari requested the Lahore High Court to take suo motu of this criminal negligence resulting in deaths of 100 patients and leaving hundreds other in a critical condition. They demanded immediate appointing of a judicial commission to investigate and bring to trial all government officials and the companies involved in this scandal.
The PTI leadership observed that Punjab government should take full responsibility of these deaths and since the chief minister was personally heading the health ministry, therefore he was fully accountable for the deaths of these patients.
Shafqat Mahmood strongly condemned the negligence and incompetence of both the federal government and the Punjab government. Due to the corruption in the federal government, he said, licences had been issued to substandard drugs manufacturing companies and medicines manufactured by them were neither monitored nor tested. As regards the PML-N government in Punjab, he said, it has made no attempt to scrutinise the quality of medicines being purchased by hospitals.
He said that, after a summer that witnessed over 400 deaths of innocent people through mismanagement of dengue, the government continued to show its complete lack of governance by letting the spurious medicines kill another hundred people and perhaps more. “In fact there are reports that politics and corruption both played a part in the choice of these substandard medicines,” he added.
Dr Yasmin Rashid, while highlighting the mismanagement of the whole debacle, said that medicines being supplied in PIC to the poor patients who suffered the adverse reaction did not carry the manufacturing date and the expiry date. Clearance by Drug Testing Laboratory is totally erroneous and dishonest. These medicines are only available in PIC and not in any pharmacy outside.
She further claimed that the first patient reported was admitted to Services Hospital on December 15, 2011; the conclusion about the drug reaction was diagnosed on January 12, 2012; while the notification by Punjab government on stopping use and procurement of drugs causing serious adverse reaction came out on January 18. Regarding the awareness campaign, she claimed, it had been delayed to date and only print media had been involved although majority of the patients might not read those newspapers. The electronic media has not been involved in its true spirit.
She said that there was no proper data on the number of patients affected or who had died due to reaction was available, adding that the chief minister had given the number which was different from the heath department information. “This is a conservative figure because we don’t yet have information of the mortality rate in other government hospitals of Punjab,” she added.
She criticised that the chief minister was now blaming the federal government for this tragedy, and questioned why the chief minister not played his opposition role properly if he thought that the registration of drugs was faulty. “Why is it that only after the death of 100 people does he come up with this allegation,” she questioned.
The PTI leadership believed that if the guilty were not punished then this scenario of people losing their lives due to mismanagement and poor governance of the Punjab government would continue and the poor people would continue to suffer.
“We have previous experience that no punishment was meted out to the people involved in the dengue scandal,” they said, adding that Lahore High Court must step in to protect the lives of the people of Punjab.
The PTI leadership warned that if the responsible were not brought to justice and this ‘deadly wrong’ was not rectified immediately to save lives of other patients, the PTI would stand with the people of Punjab and would continue fighting to get the rights of the people.
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