When a patient at Ahmedabad’s Vadilal Sarabhai Hospital (VSH) contacted Congress corporator Rajshri Kesari about a missing 3,000 payment for taking part in a clinical trial, neither of them expected to uncover something much bigger beneath the surface.
Between 2021 and 2024, over 500 patients may have unknowingly become test subjects. Believing they were receiving standard medical care, they were allegedly enrolled in unauthorized drug trials across at least nine departments of the nearly 100-year-old hospital. The trials were reportedly carried out with the involvement of 52 pharmaceutical companies and several doctors.
TRIALS AND ERRORS
Some Rs 17-20 crore is said to have changed hands, as patients got enrolled in trials for drugs related to diabetes, arthritis, skin conditions, even a rare genetic disorder. No approval from a registered Institutional Ethics Committee (IEC) was allegedly taken, nor any video/audio or paper trail recording informed patient consent, let alone counselling related to that.
In February, during the budget session of the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC), which runs VSH, Kesari asked commissioner Banchha Nidhi Pani if such trials were on. Theanswer was no. But Kesari dug deeper and found a whole rodent’s warren. She later presented the evidence: MoUs bet-ween two pharma firms and VSH’s academic arm, NHL Municipal Medical College-signed in November 2024-detailing 25-year agreements. And a document showing the dean appointing associate professor Dr Devang Rana as ‘expert pharmacologist’ for the purpose.
Hard evidence, so the AMC had to accept it and act. It set up a five-member inquiry committee which, in April, confirmed unauthorised trials were conducted by nine doctors, including Dr Rana and eight contractual physicians. All were suspended. The full list of firms involved has yet to be revealed. Pani told india today “the trials have now stopped” and the case would be taken to its logical end. The panel is now looking to recover the slush money paid into the accounts of doctors and their kin.