Kerala - Kollam   

Raid exposes medicine stockpiles

KOLLAM: Huge amounts of medicines that have crossed their expiry date have been seized from the district medical store here in a raid by the Finance Department on Thursday.

The seized medicines include more than 10,000 paracetamol tablets showing late 2007 as the expiry date.

The seizure has exposed the fact that the paracetamol stock existed when the district encountered an acute shortage of the tablets during the chikungunya outbreak last year. To overcome the shortage, the government had to make emergency purchases of paracetamol from the private sector for distribution in government hospitals and primary health centres.

More than 75,000 vials of anti-rabies vaccine were also seized during the raid. These vaccines had also crossed the expiry date. In spite of the stock, the government hospitals had constantly reported a shortage of anti-rabies vaccine.

Rabies is a zoonotic viral disease which infects domestic and wild animals.

The raid conducted at the district medical store here was part of a State-wide exercise by the Finance Department of the State government.

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