Chennai, May 16 (UNI) As there has been mad scramble for
Remdesivir injection, being used to treat COVID patients
on oxygen support, the Tamil Nadu government on Sunday
announced that the drug would be made available to public
in private hospitals from May 18.
A decision to this effect was taken at meeting chief minister
M K Stalin had with Health Minister Ma Subramanian and
Health Secretary Dr J Radhakrishnan at the State Secretariat.
The decision to sell Remdesivir in private hospitals was taken
taking into account the chaos and the long wait by the relatives
of the patients at the designated sites to get the drug and the
possibility of such places becoming another source of spread
of COVID-19, an official release said.
As per the revised protocol for the supply of Remdesivir, the
government directed the hospitals treating patients with the
medicine to procure the drug by sending its own representatives
to the designated collection centre thereby doing away with the
present system of patients’ relatives queuing up at designated
sites to get the drug.
The government will set up a dedicated website for this purpose
in which the hospitals treating patients on oxygen support with
the drug, will have to upload the patient’s details and the required
quantity of Remdesivir.
'Once the request is reviewed and the medicine allocation is
made, the hospital will have to send its own representative to
collect it from the designated collection centre', Mr Stalin said
at the meeting.
The details of the website will be announced by the government
soon, the release added.
The Chief Minister also cautioned the hospitals to procure the
drug to use it only on eligible patients.
The hospitals should also charge the same price at which the
medicine was supplied to it by the government.
Mr Stalin said Health department officials will keep track on
the sale of the drug and prevent its sale in blackmarket.
Mr Stalin also warned that legal action will be initiated against
hospitals that seek the drug unnecessarily or do not follow the
new protocol.
Inititally the drug was sold at the Government Kilpauk Medical
College and hospital in the city. As there was huge surge in
crowds, it was shifted to the more spacious Jawaharlal Nehru
multi-purpose indoor stadium at Periamet for better crowd
management.
But it did not yield the desired results as there was a massive
crowd for the drug and people jostled with one another, throwing
physical distancing norms to the wind.
Since only a limited quantity was sold, those who could not get
the drug despite standing in the queue for long hours, staged a
road roko agitation to express their anger and frustration.
After Chennai, the sale of Remdesivir was also expanded to other
districts like Coimbatore, Salem, Trichy, Madurai and Tirunelveli
where also there was big crowd for the drug.
Mr Stalin also pointed out that WHO and medical experts have
observed that the Remdesivir drug offers little benefit to those
patients on oxygen support and did not provide any major relief
to other patients.
Despite this, there was heavy crowd at the drug selling points.
To prevent big crowds during the pandemic, it was decided to
sell the drug through private hospitals also, Mr Stalin said.
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