Over 120 people have been killed by Tuesday while over 400 others are being treated in various hospitals of eastern Pakistani city of Lahore following the consumption of substandard heart drugs on the prescription of cardiologists.

Doctors of a state-run hospital, Pakistan Institute of Cardiology (P.I.C.), prescribed a combination of four medicine available free of cost from the hospital's pharmacy to over 40,000 heart patients coming from Lahore and its adjacent areas.

The first case of reaction of drug came forward on Jan. 9, and up to now over 400 patients has been registered.

In a press briefing earlier last week, health minister of Punjab province said that all the patients belong to low-income group who get free drugs from pharmacy of the state-run hospital of cardiology every month, but the batch of medicine which was delivered to the hospital's pharmacy in December last year was substandard.

Talking to Xinhua, Dr. Jafar Salar, a doctor with Pakistan Institute of Cardiology said that in the beginning doctors could not understand the nature of the strange disease, they misjudged it as Dengue and suggested their patients to continue the drugs, but when a lot of heart patients sharing the same symptoms were admitted into the hospital, the doctors realized the real nature of disease.

"The patients' drug reactions were marked by rapid depletion of bone marrow, white blood cells and platelets which resulted in vomiting blood and acute lethargy," Salar told Xinhua.

According to initial investigations by a team of doctors formed by Chief Minister of Punjab Shahbaz Sharif to probe the incident of suspected drugs reaction, one of the medicines had spots on it and the hospital distributed it to its cardiac patients without getting it analyzed from the Drug testing Laboratory.

The samples of the contaminated medicines have been sent to Singapore, Brussels and France for tests, as there is not any laboratory in Pakistan that could carry out relevant tests on the contaminated medicines.

The victims of drug reaction said that the medicine might be outdated because expiry date was not mentioned on the medicine which they got from the hospital's pharmacy.

Talking to Xinhua, Sajid Butt, attendant of an affected patient said that apart from Pharmaceutical companies, the hospital administration is also partially responsible for the great number of deaths as they accepted the drugs from the pharmacists without checking their expiration date.

The chief minister suspended the medical superintendent and chief pharmacist of P.I.C. on the charges not examining the medicine properly and accepting possibly expired medicine.

On the directives of Interior Minister Rehman Malik, an investigative team from Federal Investigation Authority (F.I.A) launched a crackdown against the suspected pharmaceutical companies, during their visits, the drug inspectors alleged that these firms were not following prescribed rules and regulations and drugs were manufactured in unhygienic conditions.

However, the owners of pharmaceutical companies have rejected the allegations and said that the medicines were approved by the drug testing laboratory and overdose or the wrong prescription of heart drugs by the doctors is real reason of the killing of a large number of people.

The F.I.A. has also held the medical superintendent of Pakistan Institute of Cardiology on Monday for investigations.

This is not the only incidence of the use of sub-standard drugs in Pakistan, every year hundreds of people lose their life because of the consumption of sub-standard drugs but authorities do not pay attention to the issue mainly because of the negligence of health sector.

For the present fiscal year 2011-2012, Government of Punjab have allocated a total of about 53 million U.S. dollars for a population of over 81 million indicating that the provincial government would spend less than one dollar on every individual from July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2012.

According to Head of Allama Iqbal Medical College Prof Dr Javed Akram, the health sector is badly neglected by the government so that the administration of public sector hospitals have to buy drugs on relatively cheaper price due to limited budget which sometimes result in drug reaction like the present incident.

The business of spurious drugs is flourishing in the country with every coming day and many high priced drugs are available on very cheap rates in local markets.

In the past, government had arrested some pharmacists for manufacturing substandard drugs but due to loopholes in the system none of them got any notable sentence from the drug courts which encouraged such elements and substandard drugs swarm in the market.

 VietNamNet/Xinhuanet