A mobile court has slapped LabAid Hospital in Dhaka with a Tk 10 lakh fine for keeping “low-quality”, unauthorised medicines.
The drugs were found during a raid by the Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) police unit on the hospital in Dhanmondi on Sunday evening.Executive Magistrate Md Feroz Ahmed of the mobile court said 26 types of unauthorised medicines, including antibiotics and injections, were found during the search that lasted nearly five hours from 5pm.
He said the estimated price of the drugs was more than Tk 500,000.
“These low-quality medicines with labels of foreign drugs have not been tested and authorised by the Directorate General of Drug Administration,” RAB later said in a media release.
Assistant General Manager (Corporate Communication) Saifur Rahman Lenin told journalists that RAB raided the pharmacies in the hospital.
“The lifesaving drugs that have been seized are not manufactured in the country. We collect them from the importers,” he said.
Lenin alleged the RAB team did not want to see the papers for the medicines.
Besides the hospital, an assistant of a doctor at the LabAid Diagnostic Centre was fined Tk 500,000 for supplying contaminated drugs to the patients.
Magistrate Ahmed said Professor Ali Hossain of the National Institute of Diseases of the Chest and Hospital practices at LabAid Hospital.
His assistant Nazrul Islam had been selling to patients a ‘medicine’ produced by making a mixture of Histamine-like drugs imported from India and bottling it at a high price, Ahmed said.
The magistrate said the doctor’s assistant paid the fines.
Another mobile court on Saturday raided SP Hospital at Mohammadpur and Al-Raji Hospital at Farmgate.
The hospitals were fined nearly Tk 20 lakh for irregularities.
The mobile court also shut down a diagnostic centre at Farmgate for operating without a doctor or nurse. – Agencies
