Cancer-Diagnostic injections found Malignant
PINSTECH manufacturing contaminated injections, posing life threats to cancer patients.
DUNYA NEWS REPORT (HUMAIRA SAJID)
Islamabad – Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology (Pinstech) has been supplying cancer-diagnostic injections allegedly contaminated with undesirable radio nuclides that could cause cancer instead diagnosing it.
Muhammad Riaz Pasha, a scientist at Atomic Energy Commission blew the whistle on contaminated injections manufactured by the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology (Pinstech) posing life threats to cancer patients.
Molybdenum 99 (Mo-99), as it is known, is used in diagnostic medical testing after it decays into technetium-99. It is used as a radioactive tracer in bone, kidney, heart and lung scans. There s a huge need for it, and it is almost always in short supply.
Recently, in an interview conducted by a media channel Muhammad Riaz Pasha said that the amount of Molybdenum 99 in the injections produced by Pinstech is as much as 10% which is alarming for the doctors around the globe as it aggravates the cancerous cells to a great extent instead of diagnosing the disease.
Each year, thousands of patients admitted to the 14 hospitals run by the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission are administered this injection, Technetium 99m Generator (also known as TC-Generator), produced at Pinstech. How many patients have lost their lives due to them is anybody’s guess as no inquiry has been held to examine the impact of this injection, he said.
TC-Generator is made of Mo99-TC99 and is used along with a medicine for imaging and studying organs suspected to have contracted cancer. Mo (Molybdenum)-99 is produced in a nuclear reactor at Pinstech. Earlier, imported from South Africa, it was decided in mid-2011 to start production in Pakistan that saved foreign exchange but the decision had a side effect, a risk to lives of thousands of Pakistanis.
Muhammad Riaz Pasha, who oversaw quality control procedure of these injections as a Principal Scientist at Pinstech, had first informed the high-ups of his office about their contamination with undesirable radio-nuclides and then approached the Supreme Court and now Justice Ali Nawaz Chohan-led National Commission of Human Rights (NCHR) with some undeniable evidence.
In addition to the 14 cancer hospitals of Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, several other hospitals use these injections bought from Pinstech. “A number of Mo99-Tc99 batches supplied to various cancer hospitals were contaminated with undesirable radio-nuclides such as Cesium-137, Strontium-90/Yetrium-90 and Ruthinium-103,” reads a 2013 complaint sent to the SC by Muhammad Riaz Pasha.
The issue was earlier taken up by the Supreme Court where Pinstech managed to bail itself out by tampering with the facts. Not only the SC, but also the Pakistan Nuclear Regulatory Authority (PNRA) that certifies such a product was also kept in the dark through faking the results of these contaminated injections. Pinstech had refused to offer comments over this misrepresentation of facts when approached by this correspondent in the past through written questions emailed to the spokesperson for the PAEC.
“The (final) results are not based on actual analysis but are tampered to appease the seniors/high ups for receiving certifications and licenses from PNRA (Pakistan Nuclear Regulatory Authority),” Pasha said in an interview. All this has been done, he goes on, without “considering those less fortunate patients who are suffering from cancer and are being injected with undesirable radioactivity.” Pasha also dispatched tampered results to the court as evidence in support of his claim.
An audit conducted by Moody International Certification Group in February 2013 of a batch of these injections pointed out serious problems. One batch of TC-Generator is sufficient for administering injections to at least 500 patients. Moody International Certification Group had also endorsed Pasha’s findings but they were not shared during the suo moto case on Pinstech.
“Values/Molybdenum-99 (0.6) were found much higher as per specified values (Standards of European Pharmocopia of 0.1%). Register indicates that 37 generators were prepared from this batch and distributed to various hospitals,” reads the observation of Jehangir Ahmed, the auditor of Moody International Certification Group on February 12, 2013.
