Daily Times

Islamabad: The Senate Standing Committee on National Health has asked the people to register any complaint regarding stents used in heart surgery on the Senate’s website, as the committee would take strict action against the doctor concerned through the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC).

The committee met at the Parliament House on Friday under the chairmanship of Senator Sajjad Hussain Turi.

Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) Chief Executive Officer Aslam Afghani informed the meeting that at present some 55 companies dealing in stents were registered in the country, while 20 firms had recently been registered.

He said that until recently there was no law to register medical devices. Initially, syringes and thermometers were registered with the DRAP, while in 2016, stents and canola were registered, he said.

The committee recommended making a pricing mechanism for stents.

Senator Kalsoom Perveen said that heart patients buy substandard stents for hundreds of thousands of rupees.

On this, told the committee that the checking of inferior-quality medical devices was the duty of the provincial governments.

Senator Ateeq Shaikh told the committee that thousand of allergy patients visit the National Institute of Health (NIH) but there was no allergist there. “They only give injection to the patients by hoodwinking them.”

Saira Afzal Tarar told the committee that the NIH was in the grip of a workers union. She said that hundreds of employees were not performing their duties under the cover of the union, and due to that reason the performance of the department had been affected. “However, steps are being taken to strengthen the institute, and the Prime Minister’s House has been requested to issue more funds for it.”

She said that her ministry had prepared a draft bill regarding manufacturing vaccines in the country. In this connection, the ministry needed assistance from the committee, she said, adding that at present Pakistan was dependent only on imported vaccines.