United Hospital fined Tk 2m for keeping expired reagents, surgical thread

A mobile court of the Rapid Action Battalion or RAB has fined the United Hospital in Dhaka’s Gulshan Tk 2 million for keeping expired reagents and surgical thread.

Executive Magistrate Sarwoer Alam said they slapped the fines during a drive on the private hospital’s laboratory and pharmacy on Wednesday afternoon.

“We’ve found a huge volume of expired reagents in the laboratory. The reagents froze because those were not kept in right temperature. Almost all the reagents expired,” said Sarwar, who led the drive. 

“Besides the reagents, we also found a large portion of the thread used in sewing wounds or during surgery had expired,” he told bdnews24.com.

A RAB mobile court on Feb 19 raided another renowned hospital, Apollo Hospitals, at Bashundhara in the capital and fined it Tk 500,000 for selling counterfeit drugs and keeping expired reagents.

One Delwar Hossain was arrested at a factory where the contraband medicines were produced at the time. Sarwoer had said Delwar admitted to supplying the drugs to the renowned hospitals in the capital.  

After the drive on Wednesday, the magistrate said they did not find any counterfeit drugs in the hospital.

Representatives of the health ministry and the Directorate General of Drug Administration or DGDA were also present.

The hospital’s duty manager Aminul Islam told bdnews24.com they would issue a statement on the issue later.

Later in the night, the hospital authorities said in a statement that the reagents had nt been used for a long time, but stashed away at a corner of the lab.

The statement claims the reagents and surgical threads have not expired yet.

It also said the hospital stopped purchasing medicines from Poly Pharma, the firm that produced and supplied the counterfeit drugs, in mid-2014.