ISLAMABAD, Aug 5: A law to prevent infectious and contagious diseases is being developed under which manufacturing, import, sale, quality and use of disposable medical devices will be regulated.

This law was taken up for discussion at a seminar organized in collaboration with the health ministry, World Health Organization (WHO), Unicef, Aga Khan University and Safe Injection Global Network (SIGN) here on Thursday.

"Had I been provided this law in time, I could have taken it up in Wednesday's cabinet meeting to seek approval for placing it before the parliament for final enactment," Health Minister Mohammad Nasir Khan said after learning about the drafting of the bill.

The minister was speaking at the concluding ceremony of a two-day seminar on 'injection safety'. He, however, assured the participants that he would endeavour to get the bill called 'Disposable Medical Devices Act 2004' passed as early as possible.

The objectives of the seminar were to discuss the status of injection safety in the country and develop a national action plan to address unsafe injection practices by developing consensus on solutions.

The minister, while quoting that 16 billion injections were used globally, said this practice had created havoc in the health sector of which Pakistan was worst affected.

Recent epidemiological studies indicated that unsafe injections account for most of the infections with hepatitis B and C virus rising in Pakistan. In the year 2000, unsafe injection practices accounted for 843,991 cases of hepatitis B infections, 125,689 cases of hepatitis C and 901 cases of HIV infections in Pakistan.

The results of a population survey also conducted in 2001 in Sindh indicated that the annual ratio of injection per capita is 13.6, 94 per cent of which are used for curative purposes while half of these injections are administered with syringes that are reused. Majority of the private general practitioners prescribed injections which were administered by unqualified dispensers.

He also deplored that syringes were used irrationally and reused by the health specialists despite the fact that doctors and nurses clearly knew the consequences of misusing the syringes.

We have a plethora of laws which if implemented in letter and spirit would solve the problems faced by us, the minister said, adding that it was the job of every hospital in charge to ensure that the right protocol was implemented and that hospital waste was disposed of properly.

He said he would also ask the provincial governments to follow the federal government laws. Though they could fine tune the laws, they should not divert from them as these were meant for the entire country, he added.

The education ministry had also been told to design the school syllabus in a way to introduce health education by specially informing children about the devastation of HIV/AIDS, he said.

The minister asked the provincial governments to promptly inform the federal government about the bottlenecks, if any, in the availability of syringes so that they could not be reused.

"It's time that we worked seriously and implemented what we believe in," he said, referring to the concept of greed which had crept into the medical profession.

Earlier different group leaders presented recommendations to develop a national policy for safe injections and promote single use of injections by encouraging auto disable syringes.

They called for drafting framework for sharps management as there was no proper plan of disposing sharps-like syringe needles, scalpels and blades etc. The participants asked for developing coherent policies which should also encompass public as well as private sectors.