Substandard medicine imports: suspicions raised over actions of former Health Secretary

The Maligakanda Magistrate Lochani Abeywickrama has emphasized that the court finds the actions of the former Secretary of the Ministry of Health Janaka Chandragupta with regard to the process of purchasing the batch of ‘substandard’ human intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG), as suspicious.

Therefore, the Magistrate has ordered that all responsible parties must be arrested and produced before the court irrespective of their positions, for the administration of justice over the providing of substandard medicine to the public.

The case related to the purchase and release of the batch of substandard human intravenous immunoglobulin within the country’s hospital system was taken up before the Maligakanda Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday (13).

There, the owner of the company responsible for supplying the batch of medicine in question, the Director of the Medical Supplies Division of the Ministry of Health Dr. Kapila Wickramanayake, and four other officials, who were arrested in relation to the case, were produced before the court.

Deputy Solicitor General Lakmini Girihagama, who reported the progress of the investigations related to the matter to the court, on behalf of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID), stated that she will submit to the court the investigation report of the National Medicines Regulatory Authority (NMRA) pertaining to the quality of the relevant immunoglobulin vials.

Furthermore, the Deputy Solicitor General revealed that the relevant batch of medicine had failed the Microbiological test and that the solutions injected into the patients’ bodies had contained microorganisms, as per the report.

She also highlighted that thereby, the microbiology experts are of the opinion that those drugs would have caused fatal allergies in patients.

In addition, the Deputy Solicitor General expressed that investigations have been launched regarding 04 other types of drugs apart from the IVIG vials in question and ‘Rituximab’, which have currently been found to be substandard.

The relevant investigations were launched into a type of drug given for Colorectal cancer (cancers associated with the rectum and large intestine), a drug given for cancers associated with the lungs and stomach, a drug used in eye surgery and another type of drug used for treating disorders related with blood clotting, according to the Deputy Solicitor General.

Accordingly, she requested the court to issue an order suspending the use of relevant medicines in treating the patients for now, and to re-import the drugs in question.

The magistrate, who took the request into consideration, has ordered the Medical Supplies Division to immediately suspend the use of those 04 types of drugs and to store them safely for further investigations.

Furthermore, the Deputy Solicitor General also presented facts at length regarding the investigations.
Later, the lawyers representing the suspects had submitted bail requests for their clients.

However, the Maligakanda Magistrate once again rejected the relevant bail requests, after considering the facts presented.

Accordingly, the court has also ordered the five suspects including the four officials of the Health Ministry’s Medical Supplies Division who were arrested and remanded in custody in relation to the case, to be remanded further until December 27, 2023.