Under the skin

Medical device industry needs govt action

The Indian medical devices industry is in serious need of examination. A series of reports from The Indian Express and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has revealed multiple signs of danger in this respect. For one, the number of “medical device adverse events”, such as deaths after the installation of a stent, has gone up from 40 in 2014 to 556 so far this year. Then there is the question of devices that have been recalled elsewhere — as many as 117 devices have been recalled over the past two years by the United States Food and Drug