Pregnant and post-natal women here have remained deprived of the supplements since the past three months. The District Public Health Office (DPHO) had halted distribution of iron tablets after a defect was noticed. [break]
According to doctors, lack of the iron supplement can have adverse effects for pregnant women. The iron supplement is essential for making hemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen to other cells. Deficiency of iron causes pre-term delivery, low birth weight, and the risk of infant and maternal mortality.
“We have sent back all one million iron tablets to LMD,” chief of DPHO, Krishna Bahadur Chand, said adding, “But the division has not yet supplied us [fresh] medicine.” He also said that his office has not taken any initiatives to purchase the medicine as it is supplied by the center.
The LMD says that one million iron tablets will arrive only at the end of December. The division concedes that thousands of pregnant women across the country are being deprived of the medicine.
LMD has already issued an order to send back sub-standard medicines to the central stores. The office presumes that more than nine million tablets could have been damaged in the packets.
“The quantity of defective medicine may be more than we assumed,” LMD chief Dr Mingmar Gelgen Sherpa said.
The office had purchased 100 million tablets from Stallion Laboratory Pvt. Ltd., an Indian company, last year. Defects like fungus and cracks within the packets have been seen in the medicine. Health centers across the country have stopped distributing the medicine and informed the ministry of the problem.
The Supreme Court also issued an order to MoHP not to distribute the substandard medicine. But LMD has asked public health centers to keep on distributing capsules which are not damaged until medicine from a new company arrives.
LMD says that all the medicine will not be recalled. “Only the substandard medicine will be recalled,” Dr Sherpa said. He said the manufacturing company will take back all defective medicine and the government will not have to bear the cost of any substandard medicine.
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