Dur­ing the pe­ri­od 2010 to 2013, ten­ders were award­ed to on­ly two com­pa­nies from the Unit­ed King­dom and Cana­da for the sup­ply of the drug, War­farin, by the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (NIPDEC) on be­half of the Min­istry of Health. Since 2011 on­ly sup­plies from Cana­da have been made avail­able to the pub­lic health in­sti­tu­tions. This was dis­closed in a re­lease from the Min­istry yes­ter­day. The in­for­ma­tion comes in the wake of charges by Dr Petronel­la Man­ning-Al­leyne that "even though it looks like War­farin, it may not be War­farin".

Man­ning-Al­leyne's warn­ing came af­ter her broth­er, for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, suf­fered a stroke on Jan­u­ary 23. Man­ning-Al­leyne, at a news con­fer­ence last week Mon­day, said her broth­er had been us­ing the drug War­farin since 2004 to thin his blood. She said the med­ica­tion her broth­er had been us­ing failed him on Jan­u­ary 23 when he got the stroke. She said around the time he fell ill there was in­for­ma­tion com­ing out of Pak­istan that some kind of heavy met­al was found in drugs used by car­diac pa­tients. She said 36 peo­ple died as a re­sult.

Man­ning-Al­leyne fur­ther said the fam­i­ly sourced med­ica­tion for her broth­er from Cana­da and his con­di­tion im­proved. She said what Man­ning had been tak­ing and what the San Fer­nan­do hos­pi­tal had been us­ing, which had al­so been man­u­fac­tured in Cana­da, re­sem­bled the same med­ica­tion the fam­i­ly had sourced. "Peo­ple out there need to know that even though it looks like War­farin, it may not be War­farin." Man­ning, 65, was flown to Wash­ing­ton last Mon­day morn­ing for treat­ment at a re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion fa­cil­i­ty. The Min­istry yes­ter­day dis­closed that the War­farin be­ing sup­plied to pub­lic health in­sti­tu­tions is safe.

"The Min­istry's Chem­istry, Food and Drugs (CFDD) has nev­er re­ceived ad­verse re­ports about War­farin which has been ran­dom­ly test­ed dur­ing the pe­ri­od 2003 to 2011." The Min­istry said all med­ica­tion reg­is­tered for use in the pub­lic health sec­tor had to be pre-test­ed and ap­proved by the CFDD as a pre­req­ui­site for pur­chase and dis­tri­b­u­tion with­in the pub­lic health sec­tor. "This process in­cludes an in-depth re­view of prod­uct spec­i­fi­ca­tions, pack­ag­ing ma­te­ri­als, la­bels, lab­o­ra­to­ry test­ing and re­search on in­ter­na­tion­al and oth­er us­es. "In or­der to qual­i­fy for ap­proval and reg­is­tra­tion, all drugs, in­clud­ing gener­ic drugs, must meet these re­quire­ments," the Min­istry said.

"In ad­di­tion, reg­is­tered drugs are ran­dom­ly test­ed af­ter ap­proved to en­sure each drug con­tin­ues to meet the re­quired spec­i­fi­ca­tions and has not de­te­ri­o­rat­ed." War­farin, de­spite meet­ing all the re­quire­ments and be­ing ran­dom­ly test­ed, is be­ing test­ed again, the Min­istry as­sured. "The CFDD is cur­rent­ly con­duct­ing an ex­er­cise to in­crease the test­ing of War­farin prod­ucts by col­lect­ing sam­ples from both the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tors." The re­lease said the drugs used in the pub­lic health sec­tor are safe, ef­fec­tive and of the high­est qual­i­ty. "The safe­ty of food and drugs brought in­to the coun­try is a crit­i­cal func­tion of the Min­istry of Health and this is gov­erned by a le­gal frame­work con­sis­tent with in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tices."

The Min­istry said there has been an in­crease in the num­ber of peo­ple and or­gan­i­sa­tions bring­ing food and drugs for sale to the lo­cal maket but warned the CFDD will con­tin­ue to strict­ly mon­i­tor this. "The CFDD will con­tin­ue to seize any un­reg­is­tered and un­sat­is­fac­to­ry drugs found in the lo­cal mar­ket. "Al­so, the leg­isla­tive frame­work for the reg­is­tra­tion of food and drugs is be­ing strength­ened and the Min­istry is work­ing with in­di­vid­u­als and or­gan­i­sa­tions to as­sist them in com­ply­ing," the re­lease said.