Local markets have been flooded with substandard surgical gloves amid lack of monitoring by the authorities concerned, increasing severe safety risks to patients and healthcare professionals.
Insiders said that some unscrupulous business people kept importing or manufacturing substandard medical items, including surgical gloves, because of the indifference of the authorities concerned to public health risks.
Healthcare professionals, including surgeons, are the main user of the sensitive medical item which is a potential source of spreading contamination in hospitals and other healthcare facilities.
Gloves might be harmful to health if those are made of nonmedical-grade rubber, manufacturing guidelines are not followed and are not from microorganisms, said doctors.
Directorate General of Drug Administration director director Md Akter Hossain said that only JMI Hospital Requisite Manufacturing Ltd got licence to produce surgical gloves and 10 companies obtained licence to import the item.
At least 25 companies are, however, importing gloves from different countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, India and China without licence.
Bangladesh needs surgical gloves worth Tk 300 and 90 per cent of the gloves are being imported, insiders said.
Surgical gloves are supplied to government healthcare facilities by third parties even without any check during import, they said.
In the National Institute of Traumatology and Orthopaedic Rehabilitation, the physicians and other healthcare providers are given surgical gloves of the brand named Truecare, imported from India by Khulna-based SM Surgical without any licence.
SM Surgical imports about 52 lakh pieces of gloves a year and supplies those to the market, its proprietor Md Sukur Ali said.
He said that he never faced any problem in importing and marketing the gloves without any licence to do so.
鈥業 have applied to the DGDA for a licence,鈥� he said.
鈥楽omeone of my buyers might supply my imported gloves to the NITOR as I did not supply the item to the hospital,鈥� he said, although healthcare service professionals at the hospital were being provided with his imported brand of gloves Truecare.
Doctors at the hospital said that the gloves supplied to them did not bear the name of the manufacturer.
A number of doctors at the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University Hospital also alleged that the gloves given to them were substandard and they had to ask service seekers to buy quality gloves for them from the market as they could not use the supplied substandard gloves.
They also failed to name the brand and producer of the supplied gloves.
The gloves supplied to many medical service facilities bear no name of the manufacturer.
NITOR director Professor Kazi Md Shamim Uzzaman said that they bought the gloves through an open tender.
鈥榃ho gave the lowest price for the products we gave them the supply order,鈥� he said.
Several patients at different hospitals in the capital said that doctors usually asked them to buy good quality gloves from the local market as the gloves supplied by the hospitals were substandard and caused risk to the service providers and the patients.
Doctors said that a significant number of gloves reportedly imported from India were substandard and those were supplied to different.
DGDA officials said that they set standards for the surgical gloves for both the producers and importers.
Allegations, however, have it that the standards set by the regulating authority are hardly maintained by the importers and producers.
Any import of the surgical gloves needs approval from the DGDA to ensure the standard.
Sector insiders said that many companies were importing this important medical item without license while some licensed companies were also importing the low quality items for higher profit.
Bangladesh Medical Equipment Importers and Suppliers Association general secretary Arshed Alam Pulok said that they were not a monitoring agency but as an association they would assist the authorities if they required.
DGDA director Akter said that there was no control over the import of surgical gloves but now they were trying to bring all the importers under accountability.
鈥榃e are conducting drives against errant importers of gloves and punishing them,鈥� he said.
According to the law, the DGDA can fine and cancel the licence for violation of the law.
In many cases, the name of the manufacturers are not mentioned on the packet of gloves. Medicine shop owners said that some of such gloves were supplied to them by medical item importer Ahsan Medical Hall of Mitford area.
Ahsan Medical proprietor Saleh Ahmed declined to comment.