PESHAWAR, Feb 1: The provincial chapter of Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) on Wednesday moved the Peshawar High Court seeking issuance of orders for halt to use of drugs, which caused over 100 deaths in Punjab of late, in the province’s government hospitals. Provincial PMA president Dr Hussain Ahmad Haroon said in a petition that drugs, which harmed hundreds of patients in Punjab, posed a threat to the lives of cardiac patients with pulmonary infections and cardiovascular diseases.

He further said the said drugs were also dangerous for sufferers of hypertension, diabetes, mellitus and nervous problems.

The PMA president said before the Punjab killings occurred, he and other doctors in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa felt that drugs stored in provincial hospitals and drug suppliers and pharmaceutical companies should be subjected to laboratory examination by Pakistan Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and Agha Khan Laboratories or foreign labs.

He requested the court to order medical superintendents of all provincial hospitals to check their stocks for spurious drugs before destroying them.

Dr Haroon requested the court to direct the provincial government, provincial health secretary, chairman Health Regulatory Authority, director general (health services) and other respondents in the case to immediately conduct laboratory tests of the hospitals’ medicines and medical supplies, and confiscation of spurious and substandard drugs for destruction.

He requested cancellation of the manufacturing licences of pharmaceutical companies producing spurious, substandard and harmful drugs.