Following the incident of a patient who was admitted to the National Hospital of Sri Lanka (NHSL) in Colombo, being given an antibiotic injection, and having been admitted to the hospital’s intensive care unit (ICU) thereafter due to serious complications, the Association of Health Professionals (AHP) has called for immediate measures to prevent substandard pharmaceutical drugs from being brought into the country.
Speaking to The Daily Morning yesterday (11), AHP President Ravi Kumudesh said that a patient at the NHSL had undergone serious complications following the administration of an antibiotic injection named ceftriaxone (a drug that works by killing bacteria or preventing their growth). According to him, the patient in question had later been admitted to the ICU, and the same was confirmed to The Daily Morning by a medical specialist privy to the matter.
“This patient has been admitted to the NHSL on 9 December, due to chest pain, and on the recommendation of a medical specialist, the antibiotic ceftriaxone has been given. As soon as the injection was given, the patient complained that his arm was going numb. He has been admitted to the ICU due to severe complications. According to tests done in the ICU, his blood pressure and the percentage of oxygen in the lungs have decreased drastically,” Kumudesh said.
Claiming that a female patient who was being treated at the National Hospital in Kandy had died due to complications that arose after the administration of the same antibiotic injection, and that the same had resulted in great controversy, Kumudesh claimed that certain parties were attempting to pre-confirm that the drug in question had no issue.
“With the change of heads in the Ministry of Health, it seems that there is a great effort to suppress the story of substandard drugs, and there is an attempt to attribute every incident to being ‘normal’. As the serious dangers of such drugs and the method of importing them have not changed so far, we emphasise that it is the responsibility of the current Health Minister (Dr. Ramesh Pathirana) to carry out a formal investigation into this incident, and to rectify other shortcomings.”
National Medicines Regulatory Authority (NMRA) Chairman Dr. Ananda Wijewickrama was not available for comment.
One of the most serious issues that the country's health sector saw in the recent past was the import of substandard drugs. The relevant authorities such as the Ministry and the NMRA have been accused of not having taken steps to prevent such. There have been several deaths of patients due to allergies reportedly caused by such drugs.