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Spurious drugs' sale calls for strict action

Such a call is necessary after the warning of the Director of the Department of Medical Control of the Ministry of Health, Dr Issa bin Jaka, who said that there are many spurious types of medicines being sold in the supermarkets. We wonder how such medicines arrive at the supermarkets in the first place, particularly since we know that the departments concerned regularly pay surprise visits to the markets to monitor the sale of such stuff which poses a serious danger to the health of residents.

We think this responsibility is that of not just the Ministry of Health, but of many other departments, such as Food Control, which should take the initiative and issue a circular forbidding the sale of such spurious stuff in supermarkets or grocery stores. Dr Bin Jaka was very frank when he said that there are smuggled medicines in the groceries and warned that any medicine without a leaflet in Arabic means it is a smuggled one, and therefore, very dangerous.

With that in mind, we also call for strict monitoring at the customs checkpoints which act as the first filter for preventing the smuggling of medicines. Also, people have a very important role in such matters, as they should not buy any kind of medicine whose source is suspect. If they actually stopped buying such stuff, that would make the groceries sit up and think many times before selling such harmful products. We also think that cooperation between different departments, apart from public awareness, will be a great force in combating the smuggling of harmful products.

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