Patients seeking compensation from Johnson and Johnson (J&J), for their hip-surgeries gone wrong due to faulty implants, now have a new ally.
About eleven Members of Parliament (MP), including seven from the Shiv Sena, and Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) have written to Health Minister JP Nadda urging him to take action against the company and to ensure that aggrieved patients are suitably compensated and measures be taken to prevent such incidents from taking place in future.
“Some patients have gone through continuous revision surgeries and some have lost their lives because of the chromium poisoning caused by the faulty metal-on-metal implants. The aggrieved patients should be given adequate compensation,” Shrikant Shinde, Shiv Sena MP from Kalyan (Maharasthra) who is also an orthopedic surgeon told
In 2010, J&J Deputy Orthopaedics had undertaken a global recall of its faulty ASR hip implants. The letter from the MPs and MLAs to the Health Minister comes even as a group of aggrieved patients are scheduled to meet the expert committee involved with deciding the compensation on Wednesday.
An earlier expert committee had pegged compensation at ₹20 lakh and running upto ₹1.2 crore, but patients claim that this is not adequate.
J&J has said it was committed to paying compensation, even as it maintained that it had acted in India in line with the local regulatory framework. The company has approached the Delhi High Court on the issue and the case comes up again later next month.
Tracing patients
J&J and the government have received flak for not being able to contact the 4,700-odd patients who had undergone surgeries with the faulty implant before it was recalled.
In his letter, Shinde pointed out that less than 200 of the thousand aggrieved patients approached Dr AK Arya’s committee for compensation. “While many patients are yet to be contacted, at least let those who have come forward get their rightful compensation,” he said, adding that the company was also in the dock internationally over its baby powder and concern over its link to ovarian cancer.
Against this backdrop, a Health Ministry source had earlier told the correspondent that discussions had started internally towards setting up a medical devices patient registry that would help track products, its use and outcomes in patients. A task that patient and industry groups say is easier said that done in the absence of a dedicated law to regulate medical devices.