LAHORE, Pakistan: The Punjab government is establishing a state of the art Drug Testing Laboratory (DTL) of international standard at Kotlakhpat, here.
According to the sources on Tuesday, the DTL will be established to ensure provision of quality medicines to the people of Punjab.
Chief Minister Punjab Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif has already given approval for the establishment of the said laboratory for which a spacious piece of land is already available in Kot Lakhpat area.
It is pertinent to mention that already four DTLs are working in the province at different cities including Lahore, Faisalabad, Multan and Bahawalpur whereas a DTL at Rawalpindi is near to complete.
The new DTL at Lahore is being established to share the heavy workload in the already existing DTLs, however, drugs testing laboratories in Punjab have been upgraded and new equipments as well as trained human resource have also been provided there.
The latest laboratory will be constructed with the cooperation of expertise of British institution of LGC for which international experts from UK have been invited to come to share their expertise.
The purpose of setting up of DTLs is to ensure provision of quality medicines in public sector hospitals while the Punjab government also intends to establish a mechanism for random testing of drugs samples with the LGC UK.
The new DTL is being constructed on the directions of Punjab Chief Minister Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif.
Health Department will seek technical assistance of Laboratory and Management Services (LGC) UK in the field of infrastructure, equipment, human resource, standard of procedures, training of the staff and some other fields.
It is also relevant to remark here that already existing drugs testing laboratories have analyzed 41,319 drug samples, out of which, 784 were proved substandard, 183 spurious whereas 962 samples failed.
Source: APP
