Health
Bengaluru: Public-health activists in Karnataka are demanding a dedicated public health cadre, on the lines of Tamil Nadu, to prevent incidents such as the drug racket recently busted in Bidadi in which spurious drugs reportedly reached around 90 hospitals and clinics.
Public-health doctor and researcher Dr Sylvia Karpagam said the episode highlighted the need to move from a reactive to a preventive approach to public health and regulation. We’ve seen that such rackets can happen anywhere — from manufacturing to procurement to distribution,” she said. Karpagam said the solution is not to clamp down on pharmacists or other stakeholders. “It is essential to have a public health cadre which can carry out on-ground monitoring,” she said. Public-health researcher Prasanna Saligram of Sarvatrika Arogya Andolana Karnataka said Karnataka’s health department was led largely by clinicians, leaving key officers with limited time and, in some cases, training to oversee broader public health and management functions. Saligram said the lack of dedicated public health personnel was particularly concerning in areas such as drug surveillance, where problems need to be identified before they reach patients. We are trying to see if the supply was established to others as well and which hospitals received fake drugs,” said Ritwik Ranjanam Pandey, principal secretary, health department.
With Special Investigation Team continuing its probe into the racket, the health department is examining connected cases and tracing the distribution network. “We’ve handed over the drug-control enforcement mandate, too, to SIT.
“If drug inspectors were proactive, they would have detected the racket much earlier.