YEH MERA INDIA

Govt panel finds lapses in drugs approval

New Delhi: A government panel has found irregularities in approval of 38 drugs without clinical trials on Indians with nine of them cleared by drug controller without reference to any expert and said the exemptions “appear to be due to pressure from pharma companies”, reports media.
The expert committee, set up by the government to look into irregularities in approving drugs, has recommended that all 38 such approvals, shall be reviewed by the newly constituted New Drug Advisory Committees. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health had in its 59th Report pointed out that 38 drugs were approved by the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) without conducting clinical trials on Indians between 2001 and 2010.
“Such approval was sporadic till 2007 (only 4 drugs given exemption in 7 years). The spurt started in 2008 when six drugs got exemption and the number has risen to 14 each in 2009 and 2010. The reasons are not clear but appears to be due to pressure by the pharmaceutical companies,” the Expert Committee, headed by Secretary, Department of Health research and Director General ICMR V M Katoch, observed in its report.
“The DCGI has approved nine of these drugs without reference to any expert between 2006 and 2010,” the Committee further observed, adding that in several cases the opinion of experts as forwarded by the companies has been accepted even when most such “experts” were not from the academic institutions and in many cases the contents of letters were identical.
“The experts have recommended waiver of clinical trials only in six cases. In all other cases the recommendation is for early marketing. They have not recommended that the procedure be short circuited. The decision appears to have been taken by DSGI,” the expert Committee observed.

IAS officer transferred 45th time

Chandigarh : Senior IAS officer Ashok Khemka, who had ordered a scrutiny of land deals of UPA chief Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra, was transferred by the Haryana government to an inconsequential post. Khemka, now managing director of the Haryana Seeds Development Corp (HSDC), will now be secretary of Haryana Archives, which is responsible for preserving public and private records in the state.

Khemka has been transferred almost 45 times in his two-decade-long career as an IAS officer.The latest transfer came after Khemka highlighted irregularities in HSDC, leaving the Bhupinder Singh Hooda government embarrassed.

Beacons only on ambulance: SC

New Delhi: The Supreme Court said it would decide whether a person other than a high functionary is entitled to use of beacons and sirens on their vehicles in view of their being misused and flaunted by people as status symbol.

A bench headed by Justice G S Singhvi also said it would examine whether closure of roads for facilitating movement of VIPs is lawful and constitutional.

 It also said beacons and sirens be used only on ambulance, fire services vehicle, police and army vehicle.

“We think you can remove the red lights from all other vehicles straight away.    One thing is there in the mind of people that they dislike the red light. Why not reconsider removing it? That will be a great signal for bringing everybody at par,” the bench told the Centre.

The bench was hearing a petition filed by a Uttar Pradesh resident on misuse of beacon in the state.

In earlier proceedings on January 17, the bench had strongly disapproved of police protection given to “all and sundry,” including MPs and MLAs facing no security threat. It had also directed the Centre and all states to furnish names of the people given security and the expenditure borne by states on it.

When a morgue died

Mumbai : Even as civic hospitals are keeping corpses in emergency wards because of lack of space in the morgues, a mortuary with a capacity of 100 has been lying idle at Sion Hospital for the past one-and-a-half years because the occupation certificate for the building was pending.

The municipality issues an occupation certificate after checking that all formalities have been completed.

The racks of the morgue were installed more than a year ago and the AC plant is functional but the morgue which is attached to the new OPD building that had come up in 2011, has been lying unused.

“The morgue along with the new OPD building was supposed to be up and functioning by 2009 but we are yet waiting for the BMC to issue the OC so that we can transfer the bodies there,” said a senior doctor from Sion Hospital.

Construction work on the new OPD building began in February 2005. The building was supposed to be ready by 2009 but it took two more years to come up as the plans were revised in 2006 but there was no budgetary provision for it, said chief engineer of BMC, J Patgaonkar.

Dr Avinash Supe, Dean of Sion Hospital, was unaware of why the occupation certificate had been delayed. “I have recently joined, so I am not aware of the reason behind the delay,” he said. Manisha Mhaiskar, Additional Municipal Commissioner (Health), had no time to meet this correspondent. She also did not reply to a text message on the issue.

Dr Supe said the new OPD building finally got an occupation certificate and that it would be fully functional in five to six months. As of now, only the first two floors of the building are being used for OPD purposes during the day. Some of the rooms on the fifth floor have been given to resident medical doctors on a temporary basis.

Dr Supe also said that the mortuary building would be in use in the next four to five months.Explaining why most health plans are still stuck in BMC’s infamous red tape, Dr Pragna Pai, former dean of KEM Hospital, said, “The condition in BMC hospitals has been deteriorating over the years instead of improving. One of the reasons is that administrative staff and hospital deans are changed too often. Because of this, the new person in charge of a hospital is unaware of the issues or plans that were supposed to be taken up.”

“Other than this, there is a lack of coordination between various departments in the BMC and hospitals. Deciding deadlines through timely meetings and sticking to them is essential which will make the health officers more accountable to the public,” added Dr Pai.