Sushil Manav
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, May 11
With the black marketing and hoarding of Covid-related drugs rampant, the government has relieved the drug control officers from the management and distribution of medical oxygen and handed over the work to the Food and Supplies Department officials.
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TO MEET HIGH DEMAND
There is a huge demand of oxygen cylinders for patients in home isolation. These plants need to be monitored for timely oxygen supply to patients. Therefore, the government has decided that the food department should monitor this task.
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Additional Chief Secretary (ACS), Food, Civil Supplies and Consumers Affairs, Anurag Rastogi has written to the District Food and Supplies Controllers to station three Inspectors or Sub-Inspectors at bottling plants in their respective areas for maintaining the record of the quantity of oxygen received by the units through tankers and the number and size of cylinders filled by it.
"There are about two dozen oxygen cylinder bottling plants in the state. Due to the Covid spread, there is a huge demand of oxygen cylinders for patients in home isolation. The monitoring of such plants is of utmost importance for the timely supply of oxygen to such patients. The government has, therefore, decided that the department should accordingly monitor this task," the ACS said in his letter.
On April 24, Additional Chief Secretary, Health and Family Welfare Department, Rajeev Arora had assigned duties to all drug control officers and senior drug control officers in all 22 districts of the state for the management and distribution of medical oxygen in the state.
"When drug control officers were busy managing the distribution of oxygen, there was no enforcement of drug laws, leading to black marketing and hoarding. It was left to the police to check these activities, as our officers were busy in managing the medical oxygen," said a senior officer in the Haryana Food and Drug Administration.
Till May 1, the Haryana Police had arrested 33 persons for the black marketing of Remdesivir injections by lodging 13 FIRs against them in eight different districts after the recovery of 101 vials from their possession. Besides, the police had unearthed the sale of fake Remdesivir injections at Karnal, Ambala, Yamunanagar and in some other districts last week.
"Our officers have not been trained to check the sale of spurious drugs and are not equipped to handle such a crisis or data management," the officer added.
from The Tribune https://ift.tt/33yJvlR
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