With the peak time for diarrhoeal diseases currently ongoing, the ICDDRB has been facing difficulties to treat patients without the use of its self-produced rice and oral saline, the manufacturing of which was suspended following recent recovery of fake saline products in the capital.
The International Centre for Diarrhoea Disease and Research Bangladesh, which had been using rice and oral saline to treat its patients for many years, is currently using the oral (glucose) saline made by an outside source as an alternative.
The ICDDRB suspended production of both its rice and oral saline products, until it received formal registration from the country’s drug administration authority. In this regard, the ICDDRB is reportedly set to submit an application to the authority concerned, seeking temporary permission for producing rice and oral saline to be used only for their in-house diarrhoea patients.
Dr Azharul Islam Khan, chief physician and head of diarrheal diseases unit of the ICDDRB Hospital, told the Dhaka Tribune that they are going to apply for the interim permission only to fulfil emergency needs of in-house patients.
He added that on an average, the ICDDRB needed around 10-11 thousand litres of saline – both rice and oral – each day to treat its patients.
Although the number of patients had come down in recent days compared to the past week, it was still the peak time for diarrhoeal diseases to spread, Dr Azharul cautioned.
Dr Ayesha Khatun, chief of the health directorate’s National Crisis Management Centre, told the Dhaka Tribune that the average number of patients at ICDDRB hospital during April 9-16 was around 675, while the total number of patients so far this year stood at 40,139.
Nasmeen Ahmed, senior communications manager of the ICDDRB, recently issued a press release saying its hospitals and treatment centres had been instructed to stop using glucose and rice-based saline obtained from the ICDDRB Employees’ Multipurpose Cooperative Society, an independent registered entity.
Selim Barami, a director of the drug administration, told the Dhaka Tribune that rice saline was a medical product, which no one could manufacture or sell without acquiring a licence.
The ICDDRB would need to follow all the rules and procedures of a commercial drug factory in order to get a manufacturing licence, Barami added.
Sources said unscrupulous traders have been producing large amounts of fake and substandard oral saline to cash in from the huge demand of the product.
During recent drives, mobile courts identified two factories in the city that were producing fake rice saline of the ICDDRB, and sentenced the factory owners and employees with different terms of imprisonment.
The Oral Rehydration Solution (ORS) or oral saline was developed by the ICDDRB (formerly the Cholera Research Laboratory) in the late 1960s, and since then is estimated to have saved at least 50 million lives worldwide.