PESHAWAR, July 8: In the wake of increasing number of medicines in the country, many times chemists confuse the name of one drug with another and give medicines to patients other than the prescribed ones, some medical practioners said.

“Patients have been getting wrong drugs from medical stores owing to the similar trade names and packings of the drugs,” a doctor at Lady Reading Hospital told Dawn on Saturday.

According to him, chemists often gave patients a pain-killer, Ancid, in place of Encid, used to treat the peptic ulcer. And sometimes, one drug was confused with another owing to the identical ampules. For instance, a patient had been sold an anti-allergic injection, Avil, instead of Adrenalline, prescribed to control falling blood pressure in emergency. This practice went unchecked from the concerned quarters, he said.

A senior doctor told Dawn that the medical practitioners who prescribed the drugs did not have time to check the medicines bought. But as a duty, they should give at least 15 minutes per patient for examination and checking drugs. The patients had complained several times that the drugs given to him/her were not as much effective as they were before, he added.

Nurses, too, often confuse one ampule with the other. Once a nurse of a city hospital had administered Adrenalline injection instead of Avil to a house-job doctor. As a result, his blood pressure soared and he was rushed to intensive care unit where the doctors saved his life.  

Later, the nurse conceded that she had not noticed the label on the injection and administered Adrenalline thinking that it was Avil.

The basic problem remains that over 38,000 registered drugs are available in the country while the number of unregistered has crossed 50,000. The number of genuine drugs sold in generic names is only 831, but different manufacturers market them with different trade names. This practice, with the other imported and smuggled medicines available in the market, make it difficult for the patients to find the genuine one. Prices of the drugs also vary from company to company.

The government of Switzerland banned the sale of a drug 10 years ago which had copied the label and packing of another famous drug.

In Pakistan 8.4 per cent drugs were registered daily during the past several years, though in the US or UK, it takes over two years to get a single medicine registered.

Many local pharmaceutical firms deliberately market their products which they pack on the pattern of reputed drugs to deceive gullible buyers.

The chemists say the rural people, who commonly practice the self-medication, can easily be dodged as they ask for drugs not by name, but by the colours of labels or packings. In this way, they remain prone to buy substandard product packed like famous drugs. Some of the chemists say the sale of substandard drugs attracts more profit than the multinationals’ products. Therefore, we prefer to sell substandard stuff, they add.