Expired medicine stock seized at Moga govt clinic
MOGA: Less than two weeks after a 13-year-old Karan Prasad died at a government school in a Mansa village after consuming folic acid tablets as the medicine was ‘near expiry date’, a huge cache of expired medicine stock has been seized from a government clinic at Mehra village in Moga.
A National Health Mission (NHM) team found medicines with expiry dates of February, April and June this year in stock at the Adolescent Reproductive and Sexual Health (ARSH) clinic. Under the rules, hospitals and clinics are must not keep even a single tablet of the expired medicine. Any such stock has to be destroyed.
The medicines seized include vials of Amoxycillin Oral suspension IP dry syrup (used for bacterial infection) with expiry date February 2017; tablets of paracetamol with expiry date April 2017 and some Dexamethasone injections (used to treat allergies) with expiry date June 2017.
“This stock of medicine was being used to treat patients, mostly children, coming to the centre,” sources alleged.
“The doctors and the health authorities have been negilgent in their duty to check that no expired medicine is given to patients,” a senior doctor said, while seeking anonymity.
Moga chief medical officer Dr Maninder Kaur Minhas said she was yet to get a detailed report on the issued, and only then she could comment on quantity seized.
“The medicines were not used to treat patients. They had not been disposed off. We will seek an explanation from the clinic authorities concerned and a warning will be issued,” she said.
Minhas added all health establishments in the district to dispose of all the contaminated material within a fortnight.
“Failure to do so will lead to strict action of raids later found contaminated medicines,” she added. The ARSG centres had been opened under the NHM with a focus on health-care needs of the adolescents.