A doctors’ trade union has demanded that the National Medicines Regulatory Authority explain how a consignment of around 190,000 G-CSF injections, said to be worth roughly Rs. 250 million, was imported and cleared through Customs without meeting labelling and quality requirements.
Specialist Dr. Chamal Sanjeewa, chairman of the Doctors’ Trade Union Alliance for Medical and Civil Rights, said the injections have not been administered because of concerns over their labelling and standards, Daily Mirror reported on Monday. G-CSF is given to cancer patients, including children, to help restore the immune system after treatment.
“If the stock is questionable, the Chairman of the NMRA, Specialist Dr. Ananda Wijewickrama, should reveal to the country as to who got these medicines released from Customs,” he said.
Sanjeewa asked how a consignment of that size could have entered the country if registration, quality certification, certificates of analysis, import control approvals and packaging requirements had not been met. He said the NMRA and the State Pharmaceuticals Corporation, which imported the drugs, should both account for it.
This is almost certainly the stock Parliament was told about in August
G-CSF is the generic class that includes Filgrastim, and the Daily Mirror’s own reporting on 4 September identified the disputed stock explicitly as Filgrastim, “also known as G-CSF Injection”, valued at the same Rs. 250 million and held undistributed.
That connects today’s allegation to a dispute this site has followed since August. Health Minister Nalinda Jayatissa told Parliament on 21 August that a consignment of 160,000 vials delivered on 28 July had been rejected because the prefilled syringes lacked NMRA-required labels. A doctors’ association later said the stock was stuck at Medical Supplies Division stores over a defect on the reverse of the label, while patients at Apeksha Hospital faced delayed chemotherapy and the drug sold on the black market for many times its list price.
The vial counts do not match: 160,000 from the Minister in August, 190,000 from Sanjeewa now. Neither figure has been reconciled publicly, and it is not clear whether the difference reflects a second shipment or a different unit count.
The argument has changed sides
The shift in Sanjeewa’s own position is the most striking part. On 4 September he was pressing for the stock to be used — asking why the NMRA could not approve it on expert advice, and why corrected stickers could not simply be imported from China and applied under supervision. On Monday he was asking who allowed it into the country at all.
The two questions are not strictly contradictory: clearing Customs and reaching a hospital shelf are separate gates, and the stock passed the first while remaining stalled at the second. But it marks a hardening from “release it” to “who let it in”, and it now points at the regulator rather than the warehouse.
The wider claims
Sanjeewa said shortages of cancer and other drugs had pushed prices up at private pharmacies, and that some medicines on sale were unregistered. He also said the health service should have around 5,000 specialists and 30,000 medical officers, but that delays in Treasury approval of cadre positions, together with salary and tax issues, were discouraging doctors from joining the public service and contributing to migration.
The Daily Mirror noted that the allegations could not be independently verified and that neither the NMRA nor the SPC had responded. No other verified newsroom had carried the claim at the time of writing.
