Vigilance Commission to investigate spurious drug scam: Omar

Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah today said the newly set-up state Vigilance Commission will investigate into the spurious drug scam while efforts are being made to plug loopholes in the system to ensure fake drugs are not administered to patients.
"The newly set up Vigilance Commission has been asked to enquire into this. Other wings of the government are also conducting parallel enquiries to ensure that all the facts are made available," Omar told reporters.
Kashmir has been rocked by protests over the supply of spurious drugs to government hospitals in the Valley. The scam came to light when laboratory tests revealed that an anti-biotic supplied to various hospitals contained zero amount of 'Amoxycillin' against the claimed 500 milligrams and other tests showed traces of particulate matter in some medicines.

The CM said that the government is investigating the fake drug scam even as the Health Minister and the Medical Education Minister are in the process of preparing a new drug policy that will ensure that spurious drugs do not reach patients.
"Both the ministers are working together to ensure that the lacunae in the system is completely plugged and such incidents of fake drugs being made available to the patients are entirely and completely stopped immediately," Omar said.
Omar said the enquiry into the scam will be "complete and total" and will not stop at any level.

"It will ensure that responsibility, wherever it lies, will be fixed and we will make sure that this is not repeated," he added.

He said that shortage of testing facilities in the state is also one of the problems.
"The government testing laboratories do not have the capacity to deal with the number of tests that need to be conducted. Therefore, we are looking at the possibility of private-public partnership in establishing laboratories for testing the drugs and medicines that are coming into the state," he said.