RAWALPINDI, May 3: The stocks of life-saving drugs (LSDs) are running low in the emergency wards of city hospitals while many of these drugs are also unavailable in the market, sources in various hospitals told this reporter here on Friday.

The crisis is due to the confusion generated by the government’s indication a few days ago that the hospitals’ drug supplies will be exempted from the GST. However, the government subsequently failed to issue a formal notification in this regard, confusing the suppliers who reduced or suspended the supply of drugs to the hospitals.

Holy Family Hospital MS Dr Nisar Cheema and District Headquarters Hospital MS Dr Zubair Hassan confirmed that their hospitals were facing a shortage of drugs.

While the MS of Rawalpindi General Hospital was not available for comments, other doctors at the hospital said the drugs were in short supply indeed and several life-saving drugs were unavailable.

“We are facing a real crisis. Our suppliers are not providing us medicines whereas the rules prevent us from asking the patients in emergency wards to arrange medicines on their own,” the in-charge of emergency ward of one of the hospitals told this reporter.

Sources in the pharmaceutical industry while talking about the issue said the confusion and the resultant crises had been aggravated by the fact that the government imposed the GST on some potencies of drugs while exempting other potencies of the same medicines from the GST.

The pharmaceutical industries had taken up the matter with the health ministry which accepted that such exclusions from the list of drugs exempted from the GST had indeed created confusion. However, the Central Board of Revenue, the industry sources said, was not willing to allow the inclusion of left-out potencies in the list.

The chemists and suppliers, the industry sources said, were reluctant to supply the drugs on which the GST was to be levied, causing the shortage of these drugs in the market as well as hospitals.

The industry sources as well as hospital doctors regretted that life-saving drugs like the Tienam, Meronem and Azectam injections were not included in the list of drugs which had been exempted from the GST.

The medicines in short supply in the city’s three teaching hospitals are the Angised, Lanoxin, Thyroxine, Valium, Migril, Norgesic, Sustac, Nilstat, Kemadrin, Polycrol, Epival, Synamet, Gravinate, Decadron, Pacitin, Theoplus, Peridoxin and Aquamen Forte tablets; the Penidure, Reparil, Klaricid, Losec, Marzine, Temgesic, Ismo 20, Isokit, Isoptin, Solocortef, Augmentin, Gravinate, Sandostatin and Candioran injections; the Trenexne and Adalat capsules; the Ventolin, Butovent and Pulmicort inhalers, the Polyfax eye ointment, Solcosyril eye gel and Epival syrup. This list is by no means exhaustive and is only indicative of the gravity of the crisis which has hit the hospitals following the GST imposition.