Renu­ka Singh

The com­pa­ny that brought in the taint­ed eye in­jec­tions that left sev­en pa­tients blind­ed in one or both eyes was award­ed over $15 mil­lion in ten­der awards by the Min­istry of Health.

Last week, Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said that as part of the pun­ish­ment for bring­ing in drugs through “il­le­git­i­mate im­por­ta­tion” chan­nels, the com­pa­ny was barred from par­tic­i­pat­ing in State ten­ders.

How­ev­er, doc­u­ments re­ceived by Guardian Me­dia from in­side Nipdec showed that as of Sep­tem­ber 2019, the same com­pa­ny, Eye See You Oph­thalmic and Med­ical Sup­plies was paid $2.5 mil­lion to sup­ply non-phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal items and an­oth­er $12.8 mil­lion to sup­ply phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal drugs to the pub­lic hos­pi­tals.

Two Sun­days ago, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed ex­clu­sive­ly that sev­en peo­ple were in­ject­ed with a taint­ed eye in­jec­tion, brought in­to the coun­try via “il­le­git­i­mate im­por­ta­tion chan­nels” and had to un­der­go surgery to have one or both in­fect­ed eyes re­moved.

Ac­cord­ing to that re­port, the Gov­ern­ment re­called the im­port­ed in­jec­tion which con­tains Tri­am­cineclone Ace­tonide as its main in­gre­di­ent back in Ju­ly.

In the past four months, the sev­en pa­tients have un­der­gone eye re­moval surgery and are cur­rent­ly be­ing out­fit­ted with pros­thet­ic glass eyes.

In its Ju­ly re­call state­ment, the Gov­ern­ment said that the drug Tri­am­cineclone Ace­tonide BP was “not reg­is­tered” in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“It would have had to be brought in­to the coun­try via par­al­lel il­le­git­i­mate im­por­ta­tion chan­nels. The Chem­istry, Food and Drug Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Health has al­ready seized stocks of this drug from the sup­pli­er,” the min­istry state­ment said.

De­spite the sever­i­ty of the il­le­git­i­mate im­por­ta­tion, the sup­pli­er is still in busi­ness and the on­ly ac­tion tak­en against the com­pa­ny was that it is no longer al­lowed to par­tic­i­pate in gov­ern­ment ten­ders.

There is al­so con­flict­ing in­for­ma­tion as to who is pay­ing for the surg­eries and sub­se­quent treat­ment that the sev­en pa­tients un­der­went since Ju­ly.

The bac­te­ria-laden drug was ad­min­is­tered by un­wit­ting oph­thal­mol­o­gists in Ju­ly and one doc­tor alert­ed the Min­istry of Health when he re­alised the sever­i­ty of the in­jec­tion.

On Sun­day, Deyals­ingh re­spond­ed fur­ther to ques­tions by the me­dia about the il­le­gal im­por­ta­tion. He said then that the Min­istry of Health mans the le­gal ports of en­try.

“We can­not man every man­grove that brings in il­le­gal drugs,” Deyals­ingh said.

In a brief in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia the own­er of Eye See You, Sunil Man­asa de­nied that he used il­le­git­i­mate chan­nels to bring in his drugs. He said he had all the doc­u­ments to prove he brought in the drugs le­git­i­mate­ly.

He al­so de­nied be­ing blocked from par­tic­i­pat­ing in State ten­ders.

“I couldn’t meet with you last week be­cause I was in meet­ings with the RHA Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty)in South about a ten­der and I am al­so com­plet­ing a ten­der now,” he said.

Man­asa promised to sit with Guardian Me­dia for an in­ter­view on Tues­day but could not be reached again.

Guardian Me­dia called last Wednes­day seek­ing an­oth­er meet­ing but was told that Man­asa was un­avail­able.

On Thurs­day, his re­cep­tion­ist said that he was “out of the coun­try.”

“He is at­tend­ing a con­fer­ence,” she said.

While Deyals­ingh said that the doc­tors had a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure their pa­tients were treat­ed with drugs that are legal­ly brought in­to the coun­try, a group of oph­thal­mol­o­gists is ques­tion­ing whether they need to in­de­pen­dent­ly test every drug that they use on their pa­tients and whether the ex­ist­ing Chem­istry, Food, and Drug di­vi­sion was do­ing its job.

Ac­tions re­lat­ed to Chem­istry, Food and Drugs are over­seen by the Chem­istry, Food and Drugs Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Health.

Ac­cord­ing to its web­site, the mis­sion of the Chem­istry Food and Drugs Di­vi­sion is to:

1. En­sure the safe qual­i­ty of an eq­ui­table stan­dard for use by con­sumers of food, drugs, cos­met­ics, and med­ical de­vices;

2. En­sure safe­ty in use, the prop­er man­age­ment and ac­cept­able stan­dards for pes­ti­cides and tox­ic chem­i­cals;

3. Pro­vide tech­no­log­i­cal and lab­o­ra­to­ry ser­vices in the ar­eas of food, drug, cos­met­ics, med­ical de­vices, pes­ti­cides, and tox­ic chem­i­cals.

The Di­vi­sion is the body re­spon­si­ble for the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the Food and Drugs Act and Reg­u­la­tions and the Pes­ti­cides and Tox­ic Chem­i­cals Act and Reg­u­la­tions. It is al­so sup­port­ed by:

1. A Drug Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee, which is man­dat­ed to as­sist and ad­vise the Min­is­ter with re­spect to:

2. Drug Stan­dards; Sched­ules of Drugs; Con­di­tions of sale of drugs; and

3. Cos­met­ics stan­dards; la­belling of Cos­met­ics, and any oth­er mat­ters con­nect­ed there­with.

A Food Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee to as­sist and ad­vise the Min­is­ter with re­spect to food stan­dards, la­belling and oth­er mat­ters con­nect­ed with the man­u­fac­tur­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion of food.

The Pes­ti­cides and Tox­ic Chem­i­cals Board.

Drug in­spec­tions re­quire ap­pli­cants to make an ap­point­ment to meet the Sec­re­tary of the Drug Ad­vi­so­ry Com­mit­tee. Ap­pli­cants must take the fol­low­ing to the meet­ing:

-A com­plet­ed Drug Ap­proval ap­pli­ca­tion form. Please fol­low the link be­low to down­load an ap­pli­ca­tion form and the Sum­ma­ry of Re­quire­ments for New Drug Sub­mis­sion.

-Sam­ples of the prod­uct.

-Re­ceipt of pay­ment for the process. The fee is TT$750.00 for new drugs, and TT$100.00 for drugs that are al­ready on the lo­cal mar­ket but have had some change to the la­bel, man­u­fac­tur­ing site, art­work de­sign or oth­er mi­nor changes.

-A cer­tifi­cate of ori­gin of the drug (in the case of im­port­ed drugs).

-A let­ter stat­ing the name of the per­son or en­ti­ty re­quest­ing the drug in­spec­tion and the name of the drug.

The ap­proval process can take as long as 120 days, and that each month there are var­i­ous dead­lines for new drug in­spec­tion and ap­proval, as ad­vised by the In­spec­tor’s of­fice.