With a view to ensure quality of the surgical items supplied to the Government hospital sector, the Kerala health department has decided to make it mandatory for the firms to produce a quality assurance certification from the Central Institute and Research Laboratory (CIRL), Kassouli while participating in the annual tender process, for the supply of surgical sutures of various ranges.

According to the Kerala Health Minister Kadavoor Sivadasan, a committee appointed by the doctors was the authorized authority to certify the samples submitted for scrutiny during the tender process, as per the existing system for the Central Purchase Committee (CPC) procurement of surgical sutures. Since that system was found inadequate to ensure quality, and there were complaints about the quality of the surgical sutures supplied in the recent years, the Government was bringing in a new system for the procurement of this item.

As per the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, CIRL is the authorized agency to certify the quality of surgical sutures. Hence, the Government has decided only to accept the tenders of the firms with a CIRL quality assurance certificate.

The Government would not even consider firms submitting applications without a certification, elaborated the minister in a Government's statement.

He said there were complaints that many of the patients had to be operated again as the sutures were of low quality and stitches broke away before the normal period of healing. As per the practice, the sutures have to last from one week to one month depending on the types of surgeries, and the stitches should worn out after the prescribed period.

There were allegations that the monitoring committee of the doctors lack technical knowledge to judge the quality of medical sutures. Hence, the Government thought of a new system to assure the quality of the product, said the health minister.

Concerned authorities have been directed to immediately implement the new method for procuring surgical sutures from this year onwards, said the minister.

It is to be noted that in a public interest litigation filed in the Kerala High Court last week, it was mentioned that the Government was considering a few firms that were blacklisted for supplying substandard surgical sutures for the Government supply for the forthcoming year. Further, there were allegations of corruption related to the purchase of surgical sutures as per the CPC procurement during the last year. There were reports that huge quantities of surgical sutures were lying idle in the various stores of the medical colleges, district and taluk level Government hospitals in the state as they were found to be of poor quality to use. Various level enquiries, including vigilance probe, are going on into the matter.