ISLAMABAD: After provincial administration raided a warehouse Thursday and ‘seized’ 45 million tablets of paracetamol, the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) said it was trying to resolve the issue to make these tablets available to patients at this critical time.

“The company administration has contacted us and claimed that this was a ‘dispensing warehouse’ of their company from where medicine had to be supplied to the entire Pakistan. We have asked them to provide us the documents to verify their claim. If it is proved that it was a fresh stock and supposed to be distributed, it would be released to the company,” a DRAP official told The News.

Pakistan is facing a severe shortage of paracetamol in the form of tablets and syrups as well as injections at a time when dengue fever has wreaked havoc in the country and in the flood-affected areas, people are falling sick due to malaria, typhoid, cholera, diarrhoea and other diseases. Rejecting claims that paracetamol tablets had been hoarded intentionally at the warehouse, the GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare Pakistan Limited (GSK) in a statement said the stock was intended to be released and distributed in the country in the normal course of business. “We can confirm the recent news about the raid to one of our warehouses. We firmly reject the claims related to hoarding Panadol intentionally to create shortage. The stocks at this warehouse were intended to be released and distributed in the country in the normal course of business,” read the statement. “As GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare Pakistan Limited (member of the Haleon group), we are led by our purpose of delivering everyday health with humanity. This has been shown through our commitment to the people of Pakistan throughout challenging times. “We continue to supply Panadol products in the country and have adjusted our production capacity to ensure some product availability, despite market obstacles,” the company added.

Explaining the raid, Dilawar Jiskani, the drug inspector Sindh, told The News, “When we asked for documents regarding the stock at the warehouse, they refused to cooperate and insisted on written directives. When they failed to cooperate, we, took the legal action and asked them not to dispose of the stock till further orders,” Jiskani maintained.