KP to deploy five mobile drug testing labs next week
The vans will screen medicines sold in provincial markets for substandard, counterfeit and suspicious drugs, and will be inaugurated at Governor House on Tuesday.
PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will put five mobile drug screening laboratories into service next week to strengthen monitoring of medicines sold across the province and to detect substandard, counterfeit and suspicious drugs, Dawn reported.
Nigar Johar Khan, adviser to the governor on health and population, inspected the newly equipped laboratory vans during a visit to the Directorate General of Drug Control and Pharmacy Services on Friday, according to the newspaper. The five vans will be formally inaugurated at Governor House next Tuesday.
ProPakistani reported that the laboratories will be added to the province's medicine monitoring system next week. Its report did not name the officials who inspected the vans, the directorate involved, or the date and venue of the inauguration.
Neither report set out which districts the vans will cover, how many staff will run them, what tests they will carry out on samples or what the programme will cost. Dawn's account of the adviser's visit described her inspection of "various sections" of the directorate without giving further detail.
The provincial drug control directorate is the body named in both reports as the base for the new units. Dawn described the vans as advanced mobile screening laboratories equipped for the purpose.
The announcement comes as the province moves to widen checks on medicines reaching consumers. Both reports placed the laboratories' start of work in the coming week, with the formal launch fixed for Tuesday at the Governor House in Peshawar.
How the reports differ
Dawn named the adviser to the governor on health and population, Nigar Johar Khan, her Friday inspection at the Directorate General of Drug Control and Pharmacy Services, and the Governor House inauguration next Tuesday. ProPakistani reported only that five mobile laboratories will join the province's medicine monitoring system next week, without naming officials, the directorate, a date or a venue. Dawn's standfirst also listed the kinds of drugs the laboratories will look for, substandard, counterfeit and suspicious, a detail ProPakistani's visible copy did not carry.
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