In a surprising yet appreciatory move, the local Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) sealed the office of a multinational company and seized unregistered stents on Sunday. The seized medical devices also included expired ones. Alarmingly the medical devices were all set to sail through major hospitals of Lahore and other parts of Punjab.
The move was a follow up of a similar action that had been conducted by FIA, two weeks back, resulting in a raid at the famous Mayo Hospital. The authority then had seized fake stents and arrested number of doctors involved in minting money from patients via unregistered private firms in Punjab. In a meeting held in Islamabad, the Drap officials voiced concern on the malpractices of cardiac consultants and specialists for using unregistered, smuggled and low-quality stents.
The situation only reflects the dismaying situation of Pakistan’s health sector and stresses upon the need of more of Medonline.pk like ventures that can provide for genuine and legal health care facilities. This includes both prescription and over the counter drugs and medical devices and equipment.
What is a Stent?
For most of our readers here, stent may sound familiar. If you have ever had an experience with a heart patient or are dealing with a condition on your own, you pretty well know what this means. A stent is a small mesh tube that’s used to treat narrow or weak arteries. A very peculiar procedure called percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) is carried out in order to place the stent in an artery, this is also known as coronary angioplasty. The mesh tube helps support the inner wall of the artery in the months or years after the procedure. Not only support, the procedure is also used to improve the blood flow and help prevent weak arteries from bursting. These medical devices are not for general sale and are only available at hospitals and with registered practitioners. If you are getting the stets from some common sources or are being advised to have them procured from random shops, make sure you follow the above mentioned suit and inform relevant authorities.
What do they look like?
Stents usually are made of metal mesh, but sometimes they’re made of fabric. Fabric stents, also called stent grafts, are used in larger arteries.
Some stents are coated with medicine that is slowly and continuously released into the artery. These stents are called drug-eluting stents. The medicine helps prevent the artery from becoming blocked again.
What the story tells us?
In a country that is plagued with random selling of medical devices and drugs, problems like these are a regular. You can pretty much expect to be at a doctor, a reputed one to say, get yourself prescribed, helped yourself get an appointment for a surgery, arrive for a procedure, wake up getting told your procedure was successful, and return back only to learn that there was no procedure at all. Selling such devices online in not a happening and if you are coming across some business offering to buy medical equipment online in Pakistan, be aware it could pretty much be a scam. Here are some tips that you can follow generally when you are doing online medical devices shopping.
- Trust is Primary: Be it the high end quality brand or the low end some regular market stuff, what matters the most is trust. Until and unless you have your trust established that the purchase is of your use, fulfilling your need and attending to it, have a go.
- Brands Are Important: Yes no matter how much you curse the growing branding, the fact is that good is delivered high ended only. So, it is better to trust brands that have a repo.
Online is Good: Instead of getting fooled around by retailers and wholesalers, while not knowing about the quality it is better you rely on someone who is more trustworthy. Online medical stores do carry a certain credibility as they are the ones looking for more business and establishing themselves and hence cannot afford to lose anything.