Spurious drug charges return to haunt dist hospital in Odisha’s Bolangir

Odisha Sun Times Bureau
Bolangir, Apr 24:

Charges of supply of spurious medicines have returned to haunt authorities at the district headquarters hospital (DHH) in Odisha’s Bolangir.

A year after allegations of spurious medicines and syringes made the headlines in the local media, fresh charges of inferior quality medicines have spread panic among the patients

The incident came to the limelight when a nurse noticed the change in colour of an anti-biotic injection she was about to administer to a patient at the Bolangir district hospital recently.

Expressing doubt about the quality of the injection, she showed it to Dr Umashankar Sai, who found that the colour of the injection, which should be yellow in colour, was black.

Sources in the hospital said the anti-biotic injection Maxclav 1.2 gm, being supplied by the Maxmed Life Sciences Pvt Ltd of Rudrapur in Uttarakhand since August, 2014, has already been administered to some patients.

Significantly, the colour of these injections has changed before its expiry date of July.

When asked about the matter, chief district medical officer (CDMO) Dr Rabi Narayan Tripathy said he would inform the matter to the higher authorities.

“The Health department would take a decision after test report of these anti-biotic injections is received,” he added.

It is worthwhile here to mention that reports of supply of inferior quality of syringes and medicines to the hospital by two companies was published in the media about a year ago.

Though the companies which supplied the syringes and the medicines to the hospital had claimed that they were original, the Health minister later asked the department to blacklist these two companies and initiate action against them.

Locals have alleged that Health department officials, in exchange of a hefty bribe, have allowed the companies to resume supply of poor quality medicines.