Medical negligence by Johnson & Johnson has been alleged by one Mr. Arun Kumar Goenka who has filed a Public Interest Litigation in the Hon’ble Supreme Court.
A bench comprising of Hon’ble Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, Justice S. K. Kaul, Justice K. M. Joseph accepted the PIL Ashok Kumar Goneka v. Union of India & Ors. It has been alleged by the petitioner that the US-based pharma major Johnson & Johnson has fit faulty hip implants in 14,525 Indian patients. The complaints have been made against Johnson & Johnson, its Indian Subsidiary and DePuy Orthopaedics Inc. A reference in the petition was made to a committee set up by Government of India, headed by Dr. Arun Agarwal, Professor of ENT, Maulana Azad Medical College to investigate the distress caused to Indian patients due to implantation of faulty Hip Implant produced by the alleged companies. The petitioner also pointed out that DePuy Orthopaedics officially withdrew its hip implants as they were faulty in the year 2010. Whereas the said implants were sold in India between the year 2005 to 2006. Johnson & Johnson applied for import license in December 2006 which stood granted by Drug Controller of India in the same year.
The petitioner brought to the fore that in the USA the company had to already pay $4.40 billion to the victims of such faulty implants whereas in India no such measures have been taken which has added to the plight of all those patients who are suffering till date. The petitioner’s mother died because of such faulty and defective implants.
Taking cognizance of it, the bench ordered that a copy of the report prepared by Dr. Arun Agarwal shall be presented before the court and the next date in given after two months until which Central Government must prepare a response to the same. For this purpose, assistance of Additional Solicitor General has been asked for by the Hon’ble Court.
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