Dear All,
This is the third quarterly report of the project for Save Clinical Drug Trial-Ethically Sound and Corruption Free. We had both positive and negative results during this quarter. The saddest event happened is the unfortunate and untimely demise of Adv.Jijo Paul. Reasons for his death are yet to be confirmed, but initial findings support the case of suicide. His sudden death created a vacuum and will take time to overcome the tragedy. Mr.Jijo Paul was assigned the task of filing the PIL in the Kerala High Court and to best of our knowledge he had done all the preliminary work and was ready to file the PIL. At present we are in trouble and are forced to find new lawyer of his calibre to carry this activity. In the mean time we had some positive results during the reporting quarter.
The most important result is our meeting with Health Secretary, Kerala Dr Rajeev Sadanadan IAS. After much delay we could mange to carry this activity with some encouraging stand from him. He accepted our findings and recommendations totally. As a preliminary step he agreed to constitute an expert body that will look into the issues and asked us to recommend few names for this purpose.
Among other positive notes the major achievement during the reporting quarter is the participation and presentation of our findings in the national consultation on the need of regulation of drug trial conduction held at New Delhi. The seminar was organised by SAMA and CSER in cooperation with other stake holders who are actively involved in the fight against unethical drug trial conduction in India. This meeting helped us to establish institutional and individual contacts for the effective implementation of the project. We were also able to organise number of monthly and weekly sensitisation programs which resulted in the dissemination of information on clinical drug trials to large sections of society.
During the reporting period we formed Kerala Health Watch Chapters in Idukki and Alappuzha Districts. Apart from these positives we had also some negatives during this quarter. We couldn’t execute few activities like quarterly workshops for the doctors, hospital management, ethics committee members due to non cooperation and to a large extent by the hostile environment in the medical field.
We accept both positives and negatives and will adopt new ways and means to turn these negatives into positives.
Click below to read the quarterly report
