iJaipur: The World Health Organisation (WHO) has sought a detailed report from the Union Health Ministry regarding the deaths of seven women due to alleged post-childbirth complications in Rajasthan’s Kota and Bikaner districts, amid concerns that the quality of drugs supplied to govt hospitals may have contributed to the fatalities.Officials in the medical education department said the Centre has communicated the WHO query to the state government. “The WHO has sought details about medicines that failed quality tests, and their manufacturers, to ensure they do not end up getting supplied to other countries,” an official in the department said.Meanwhile Friday, the Centre had initiated regulatory action against an Amritsar-based firm accused of supplying spurious oxytocin injections to govt medical facilities in Rajasthan. Oxytocin is widely used to induce labour and control postpartum bleeding.Preliminary findings indicate that oxytocin injections supplied by the firm Jackson Laboratories failed quality tests and are suspected to be spurious. In response, the Centre cancelled the manufacturing licences of units run by the firm in Punjab and Himachal Pradesh following regulatory inspections.The action comes after a state govt report forwarded to the Centre regarding oxytocin batches supplied by the firm to health facilities in Rajasthan. “We had sent the report on oxytocin to the Centre on June 23,” principal secretary (Health and Medical Education) Gayatri Rathore told TOI.Health authorities are also examining a series of cases reported from Jodhpur, where at least eight women developed serious complications after caesarean deliveries last week.State and central teams are reviewing treatment protocols, medicine supply chains, drug procurement records, batch distribution details and hospital procedures to determine whether contaminated or substandard injections might have played a role in the post-delivery deaths in Kota and Bikaner and the complications in Jodhpur.Kota’s govt-run New Medical College had reported five post-caesarean deaths between May 5 and May 17, while two similar fatalities were reported from Bikaner’s PBM Hospital on June 19 and June 21.Several other women had developed kidney complications following caesarean deliveries at govt-run medical facilities in the two districts, sparking public outrage and demands for accountability.Gfx
