PPMA claims PIC deaths were caused by wrong drugs prescription

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Pharma Manufacturers Association (PPMA) has claimed that patients in the Pakistan Institute of Cardiology (PIC) did not die due to the usage of poisonous/substandard drugs, but died due to the wrong prescription of ‘blood thinning’ and lipid lowering medicines to them without taking their past medical history into consideration.

PPMA Chairman Asad Muhammad Khwaja said the pharmaceutical industry of Pakistan was exporting its medicines to 60 countries. He said the PPMA’s member pharmaceutical factories last year exported medicines worth $193 million to 10 Asian states including Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, besides the Philippines and Far-East and African countries. He said 30 percent increase was being seen in the pharmaceutical industry in the current year.

Asad Khwaja said there were about 615 pharmaceutical factories in Pakistan out of which only 20 factories were foreign. He said the drugs that caused death of over 80 patients in the PIC were sent to our Central Drugs Testing Laboratory in Karachi where all these medicines were termed quality drugs.