The test reports of drugs used in prisons and government hospitals of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa submitted to the Peshawar High Court (PHC) revealed that various medicines were spurious and substandard.
During hearing of a suo moto notice about use of spurious drugs in prisons, a division bench comprising PHC Chief Justice Dost Muhammad Khan and Justice Waqar Ahmad Seth after receiving the test reports issued notices to secretary health, director general health and special secretary health to submit a detailed reply about the use of spurious drugs in the prisons and hospitals of the province.
The bench also issued show-cause notices to the abovementioned Health Department officials for not complying with the high court judgement for one year. The bench headed by the chief justice through health experts had prepared policy guidelines for the department regarding purchase of drugs and declared the service of doctors and other staff in hospitals as essential services.
The bench directed the chief secretary, director general health and secretary health to frame the policy guidelines with the subcommittee of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government on health and put it before the cabinet for approval within a month.
Inspector General (IG) Prisons Qudratullah Marwat, Director General Health Dr Sharif, Special Secretary Health Dr Noorul Iman, Chairman Health Regulatory Authority Muzaffar Khan and other officials including Deputy Attorney General Iqbal Mohmand were present in the court.
The bench also asked the Health Department to provide lists of the officials including executive district officers (health) involved in purchase of drugs for hospitals and prisons of the province so that the court is able to take action against them.
The chief justice observed that the guilty officials would not only face termination from service but would also be put behind bars. In a previous hearing, the bench had directed all district and sessions judges to depute responsible judicial officers to collect samples of drugs from prisons and government hospitals at the district and tehsil level and send the same to federal drug testing laboratory.
The federal drug testing laboratory produced a record of drug reports from a number of districts but it requested the court that reports from some districts like Tank, Nowshera, Karak, Swat, Lakki Marwat, Malakand and Torghar were still under process due to the heavy workload at the laboratory.
The IG Prisons informed the bench that jails in the province lacked health facilities as their demand for medicines were not met even after six months and there was no facility of screening tests of various fatal diseases including HIV and hepatitis A, B and C.
The bench directed the Health Department to ensure supply of medicines to the prisons within a week. The bench also asked the provincial government to release funds for the Health Regulatory Authority, as currently there are two inspectors only for the entire province. The bench fixed February 28 for next hearing of the case.
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