Swine flu effect: 86,000 packets of medicine in state expiring in month

State health department officials said they had received close to 19.80 lakh doses of Tamiflu in 2009 as the numbers of suspected,positive cases of swine flu swelled within days. The first lot of medicines that were sent to the state expire after two years,leaving the state government with 86,000 packets of medicines to dispose of. These packets have 10 ten tablets each of 75,45 and 20 mg dosage administered as per the requirement.

Similarly,the stock of the medicine given in syrup form to children detected with swine flu have also reached their expiry date. Officials said close to 80,000 Oseltamavir syrup bottles would also have to be disposed of.

Officials at the public health department said the district health officials had been asked to identify the expiry date of medicines and set them aside. A large part of the stock was used up after late 2009 when the public health department began administering tamiflu to patients showing the first symptoms of swine flu to avoid casualties.

Senior public health department officials said they had written to the Centre for guidance in disposing the medicines. “We have written to the Central government to guide us. Ultimately,the medicines cannot be used and they will have to be disposed at the end of the month. The Central government had supplied the medicines; we have asked for their guidance,” a senior health department official said.

Many of them were in Delhi on Thursday and Friday for a meeting on NRHM,and were scheduled to discuss this problem as well.

In a similar instance,the state government had to return swine flu vaccine doses sent by the Central government after doctors refused to take them. More than half of the 34,300 French vaccines procured at a cost of Rs 300 a dose were returned before their expiry in July last year. Following swine flu casualties last year — a majority of them in Pune and Mumbai — the Union Government had placed an order with French drugmaker Sanofi Pasteur for 1.5 million doses of H1N1 vaccine in December,mostly to be given to the high-risk group of medical practitioners.