Medicines stolen from govt hospitals to make narcotics seized

Scores of boxes of medicines stolen from the stores and warehouses of government hospitals and the stockrooms of pharmaceutical companies as well as those manufactured at illegal factories, intended to be sold to narcotics manufacturers in Afghanistan, were seized on Thursday in a raid at Karachi’s notorious Katchi Gali.

In the raid, which was supervised by a joint team of Sindh Health Department officials, the provincial drug administration and the local police, and led by an additional health secretary and the acting provincial chief drug inspector, a huge cache of expired drugs, counterfeit and spurious medicines and raw material used in medicine manufacturing was also confiscated.

“Today we have seized a large quantity of medicines stolen from government hospitals, physicians’ samples that are given to doctors for their patients by pharmaceutical companies, expired and unlabelled medicines as well as a huge quantity of counterfeit and spurious medicines. We have sealed many shops and taken some people in custody,” acting chief drug inspector Adnan Rizvi told The News.

Many of the shopkeepers managed to escape through safe passages in the congested market, leaving behind open shops and warehouses, while many pulled down the shutters of their warehouses in such a hurry that they could not even switch off the lights, fans and other electrical appliances, as the local police were not taken into confidence by the raiding party prior to conducting the raid at the medicine market.

According to drug inspectors and health department officials, Katchi Gali is the biggest market in Pakistan from where illegal medicines and chemicals are supplied to the entire country, medicinal grade raw material to illegal factories in Punjab, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and even to Afghanistan, where they are used to manufacture narcotics.

Last month the Sindh Rangers had rounded up several suspects who were providing expired medicines and their raw material purchased from scrap dealers to Afghan traders, who in turn were smuggling them to their country for preparing cheese heroin from paracetamol, crystal meth (or ice heroin) from Panadol CF (Cold+Flu) and other drugs containing pseudoephedrine, and DXM (dextromethorphan) crystal from cold and cough medicines containing the pharmaceutical chemical DXM.

But the extent of medicines and raw material seized by the health department officials and drug inspectors in the latest raid was of such magnitude that even the officials were surprised as scores of shops and warehouses were found to be filled with illegal, stolen, counterfeit and spurious drugs.

“This is such a big racket of illegal drugs that we would need to conduct regular raids with a larger force comprising more police, Federal Investigation Agency and Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (Drap) officials, and even the paramilitary Rangers, as there are hundreds of warehouses and shops filled with illegal stuff,” said a health department official.

Adnan Rizvi, the acting provincial chief drug inspector, said that some of the medicines carrying clear warnings that they could not be sold in the market were supplied to public hospitals by pharmaceutical companies, but they were shifted to the medicine market, from where they were being supplied to remote areas of the province and other cities of the country.

“We also confiscated a large number of medicines which were physicians’ samples but they also ended up here and are sold to small traders who in turn sell them in other parts of the province and the country.”

Rizvi said they even found counterfeit products, including disinfectants, which contained nothing except coloured liquids, expired medicines and many famous brands of glucose, pain relievers and oils whose production had been stopped by their manufacturers but their counterfeit versions were still being prepared and sold from the medicine market.

Shops full of smuggled medicines from India, Europe and the rest of the world that could not be sold in Pakistan because they are not registered with Drap were also sealed, while dozens of boxes of counterfeit herbal, homeopathic and Yunani/Ayurvedic medicines were also seized during the raid.

Additional Health Secretary Dr Jamaluddin Jalalani, who supervised the raid, said this was a big racket that needed to be busted, as these people were playing with the lives of people who could not differentiate between original and counterfeit medicines or those that had expired, but they were still being sold to patients because they do not know any better.

“We shall send these medicines for analysis at the drug testing laboratory and the companies that manufacture them, and after their reports, criminal cases in accordance with the drug act will be registered against the perpetuators.”