By JULIA DAIA BORE
SNAKE venom experts from leading world universities who have also researched snake venom in PNG, have decried and “strongly condemned” the comments by Mahesh Patel, managing director of City Pharmacy early this week.
Mr Patel was reported in the PNG media, defending his company’s sale of the antivenom imported from India and currently sold for K8,000 over his pharmacy counters in Port Moresby.
Mr Patel had claimed in the Post-Courier that the antivenom was “... also a broad spectrum medicine which would give protection against a couple of poisonous snakes found in Sandaun and many in West Papua”.
Snake venom expert David Williams said Mr Patel’s statement was “completely false and dangerously misleading”.
He said the Indian antivenom offers “absolutely no protection” whatsoever against the effects of snake venom found in any PNG or West Papuan poisonous snake species.
Dr Williams said the Indian-made Haffkine polyvalent antivenom were currently sold in India for the equivalent of K28 per vial, and its sale in PNG for K1,100 by City Pharmacy was outrageous..
He also urged anyone who purchased the product or had any other information on the sale of this unsafe and ineffective Indian antivenom by City Pharmacy or any other business, to report the matter to The Chairman, Pharmacy Board of Papua New Guinean, P O Box 807, Waigani, NCD.
Another expert Prof David Warrell, a professor of tropical medicine and infectious diseases, at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, said Patel’s comments were “factually incorrect and criminally misleading” and constitutes a threat to the lives of PNG snake bite victims.
Another medical expert on venomous snakes, herpetologist Mark O’Shea, who authored the book, “A Guide to the Snakes of Papua New Guinea”, published in 1996, said of Mr Patel’s comments: “If the ramifications of this claim were not so serious, they would be humorous, but what Mr Patel is saying is criminally negligent...
“... I can tell you one thing about his (Mr Patel’s) customers. If they use his Indian antivenom to treat snakebites in PNG, they are unlikely to come back and buy further stocks; because they will be dead.”
Mr Patel was approached by The National for an interview, but declined the offer.