Pune district administration sets up remdesivir control room to ensure availability of drug

This comes a day after relatives of Covid-19 patients ‘gheraoed’ the chemists at Poona Hospital Medical Store after they failed to procure the remdesivir injections despite procuring tokens in advance.

Pune Collector Rajesh Deshmukh has also formed several flying squads that will ensure that hospitals and pharmacies ably and transparently discharge the duties and provide remdesivir injections to the needy patients. It will also work towards stopping hoarding and black-marketing of the drug.

The control room will be operating 24×7.

If a patient or relative calls the helpline, he or she will be advised to ask the treating hospital to approach the helpline and register their complaint of non-availability of the drug. The control room will then contact the distributor to help the hospital get the vials.

Hospitals treating Covid-19, including the facilities that don’t have an in-house medical store, will have to mail their requirement of the drug to the distributors every day. Similarly, stockists/distributors will have to update the control room and FDA officials every day regarding the number of vials they have received and distributed to the hospitals.

Earlier, Deshmukh had directed the hospitals to procure remdesivir from the wholesalers and distributors directly as per the needs of the patients and had ordered that relatives of patients shouldn’t be asked to get the injections from outside.

“The hospitals treating Covid-19 patients should procure remdesivir injections in a number that will last for three days,” reads an order signed by Deshmukh.

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Wholesalers and C&F agents of the companies have been asked to provide the injections as per the demand registered by the hospitals or affiliated pharmacies after inspecting the documents. They must preserve the data of the sale of remdesivir and send it daily to Food and Drug Administration department, the order adds.

Deshmukh further informed that remdesivir will not be sold to retail pharmacies that are not linked to a Covid-19 hospital.