Spurious ‘life-saving medicines’ contained chalk, starch: officials

KARACHI: All the 15 samples of life-saving drugs confiscated during raids in Karachi and Hyderabad have been found to be ‘spurious and fake’, health officials Monday said, claiming that some of the fake life-saving antibiotics contained ‘calcium carbonate or chalk’ instead of active pharmaceutical ingredient while some of the fake antibiotics contained raw material of other but inferior quality antibiotics.

“We have all the 15 samples of medicines confiscated from different areas of Karachi and Hyderabad to be fake, spurious and counterfeit. For instance, instead of active pharmaceutical ingredient of Azithromycin which is used to treat Extensively Drug Resistant (XDR) typhoid, we found calcium carbonate or common chalk in the tablets”, Adnan Rizvi, Chief of provincial Drug Testing Laboratory (DTL) Sindh, told The News.

Provincial and federal drug inspectors had found a large number of life-saving drugs including second and third generation antibiotics, antipsychotic drugs, painkillers and several other important drugs during raids in Hyderabad and different areas of Karachi, which were not only being manufactured in Karachi’s slums but were also being supplied from Lahore, various areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.

Sindh’s DTL Chief maintained that earlier one or two samples from 20 to 30 medicines tested by them used to be found as spurious or fake but this time, all the samples sent to them by the drug inspectors were found to be fake and counterfeit as they contained chalk, starch or pharmaceutical ingredients of inferior quality, which could kill people especially children instead of curing them.

“For instance, if a child need meropenem injection for the treatment for some life-threatening infection but instead, he or she gets ciprofloxacin or some other antibiotic in the packing of meropenem, he would eventually die instead of getting cured. Criminals producing these medicines ae actually mass murderers and should be hanged”, Rizvi added.

On the other hand, pharmacists and chemists claimed that not a single meeting of Provincial Quality Control Board (PQCB) of Directorate of Drugs Control Sindh had been convened during last one year, saying without meeting of this board, no case of spurious and fake drugs could be forwarded to the drugs court for trial and punishment to the criminals.

“Without punishments, there is no way to curb the menace of fake and spurious drugs in the country”, Ghulam Hashim Noorani, an office-bearer of Pakistan Chemists and Druggists Association (PCDA) said.

Earlier officials in the National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination (NHS,R&C) said ffollowing the raid on the printing press and arrest of culprits printing illegal packing material for life-saving drugs, they have launched a a country-wide investigation to detect the criminals behind producing spurious and counterfeit medicines, adding that the racket of spurious and counterfeit medicines has spread to all the four provinces of Pakistan.

Officials said they have found counterfeit medicines including meropenem, ciprofloxacin, cefixime, Azithromycin and other antibiotics, different brands of painkillers, anti-psychotic drugs including Alprazolam which is a very important drug for the treatment of psychotic disorders during raids in different cities of Pakistan. They said spurious and counterfeit medicines were being supplied in small cities and towns where people have little knowledge about genuine medicines.